
Class 

Book 

Copyright^ 

COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



MAN AND HIS ENVIRONMENT 



MAN AND H I S 
ENVIRONMENT 

THOUGHTS OF A THINKER 

COLLECTED AND EDITED 
BY HIS FRIEND 

JOHN P. KINGSLAND 

Author of " The Man Called Jesus" 




JAMES POTT & COMPANY 

1904 



BRioo 



Copyright^ 1904, by James Pott & Company 
Printed September, 1904 



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All Seekers After Truth 

Groping Thro' Darkness and Twilight 

Up to The Eternal Light, 

I Dedicate This Book, 

The Record of the S piritual Experiences 

of 
T h at Friend of Mine 

Who Sought and 

Found 



r 



MAKE no claim to have done more than visit some 
X of the outer courts of Truth. I cannot venture to 
think that my little plummet has sounded all the depths of 
Life; nay, I know that the shortness of my line places the 
deeper depths for ever beyond my reach. 

" But this I say — can I say more? — with the utmost 
desire to think and to live Truth, thus do things appear to 
me; even thus, as I at present see, do what I am, and 
what the Great All is, project themselves to me in Thought." 

Extract from one of my Friend' s note-books. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER PAGE 

Introduction i 

I. Truth 8 

II. Mankind 33 

III. Life 57 

IV. Forces 109 

V. Religion 151 

VI. Religion {continued) 185 

VII. Religion {continued) 232 

VIII. Love 284 



r 



MAN AND HIS ENVIRONMENT 



INTRODUCTION 

It will save a good deal of explanation on my 
part, and enable the reader to understand much 
more clearly both the reason which induced me 
to undertake the task of editing these thoughts, 
and also the main drift of the thoughts themselves, 
if I at once place before him the following letter : — 

"London, March 13, 18 — . 

"My dear K., 

"I have for many years, as you are aware, been 
gathering materials for a work on some of the 
higher aspects of Life, regarded as much as possible 
from the scientific standpoint of the present day. 

"It has been my dearest wish to complete this 
task before I was called away, but I see now that 
this is not to be. The hand of death is upon me; 
I can no longer write, or even revise what I have 
already written. 

"I am loath, however, to relinquish the hope 
I have SO' long cherished of giving to the world 
something which shall be of use to it in the present 
crisis — something which shall help it to find its 
way through the mists of doubt, and the darkness 

[1] 



INTRODUCTION 

of Agnosticism and Materialism, to the clear region 
of Faith and the brightness of true Life. 

"I may have over-estimated my ability to do this, 
but I cannot over-estimate the joy and delight which 
I have found in seeking for Truth, and in attempt- 
ing to live by it, as far as I have apprehended it ; and 
I would fain, in however imperfect a manner, lead 
others to see and delight in it too. 

"My original intention in this matter I cannot 
now carry out, but I think that some selections from 
what I have written might be made by a competent 
editor, and issued in the form of a small volume. 

"I do not know any one half so able, or, I believe, 
half so willing, to undertake this labor of love as 
yourself, my dear K., and I have accordingly di- 
rected that all my manuscripts shall be placed at 
your disposal, and leave it to your absolute discre- 
tion to deal with them as you think fit. 

"I make only one stipulation — do not publish 
my name. If there is any Truth in what I have 
written, it will be its own witness, and will not be 
benefited by the endorsement of an unknown indi- 
vidual; if it is not worth the world's attention, it 
will be better if I and it sink into oblivion together. 

"Hoping, my dear K., that in putting this matter 
into your hands I do not abuse the privileges of that 
friendship which we have so long enjoyed together, 
or burden you with a too heavy responsibility, 
"I remain, 

"Your faithful friend, 



I was both shocked and surprised on receiving 
this letter, shocked to find that my friend was so 



INTRODUCTION 

seriously ill, for though I had heard that he was 
unwell I had not regarded it as more than a passing 
indisposition; surprised that he had selected me for 
the task of arranging and publishing his manu- 
scripts. We had in former years been exceedingly 
intimate, but our friendship was interrupted by my 
removal from Town, and though we occasionally 
corresponded, we had not often met since. Previ- 
ously to my receiving this letter, we had not seen 
each other for many months. 

I had no opportunity of either seeing or writing 
to him concerning this serious responsibility which 
he desired to place on my shoulders, for only two 
days after he wrote to me I received intelligence 
that he was dead. Though I did not feel at all 
competent to undertake the task which had so unex- 
pectedly devolved upon me, I did not consider my- 
self justified in ignoring the claims of friendship, 
and determined to do my best. 

In due time the manuscript arrived. The reader 
may be sure that if the prospect of undertaking the 
work of editing them had appeared formidable to 
me previously, it became a hundred times more so 
when on examination I found them to consist, to a 
very large extent, of fragmentary notes, jotted 
down, apparently at random, in a number of note- 
books, on slips of paper, and even on the backs of 
envelopes. I was in despair. Summoning up my 
courage, however, I proceeded to attack the form- 
idable mass. 

As I went on, two things became clear to me. 
The first was that the majority of the notes were 
written so entirely from the standpoint of my 

[3] 



INTRODUCTION 

friend's personal experience that it would be im- 
possible to dissociate them from their author. They 
contained a record of his own inner life — of his 
lifelong search for Truth. As a personal history 
they were extremely interesting, but to separate the 
man from his thoughts was impossible. 

The second characteristic which I soon noted was 
that my friend's thinking gave evidence of a marked 
development. I was able to arrange the notes fairly 
well in chronological order; and not only were the 
later ones fuller and less fragmentary than those 
which belonged to an earlier date, but they gave 
evidence of a firmer grasp of Truth, and they 
breathed a greater confidence of conviction. 

It struck me, after a time, that these character- 
istics might be turned to account, and help me to 
solve the problem how best to arrange the notes, 
and in what form to publish them. It did not seem 
impossible to keep in mind the main purpose for 
which they were written, while, at the same time, 
making them expository of my friend's mental and 
spiritual growth. 

This, accordingly, is what I have attempted in 
the following pages. I have as far as possible en- 
deavored to let my friend speak for himself; but 
throughout the book (and especially in the earlier 
chapters, which contain the more fragmentary 
notes) I have connected the thoughts by a thread of 
comment and exposition. My intimate acquaint- 
ance with him in former years (which, to a great 
extent, covered the period during which the earlier 
notes were written), recollections of which have 
been revived by frequent perusal of his manuscripts, 

[4] 



INTRODUCTION 

has fortunately enabled me to do this most com- 
pletely where it has most been required. I would 
gladly have kept myself altogether in the back- 
ground, but the character of the material at my dis- 
posal seemed to make the plan I have adopted by far 
the best, if not the only feasible one. 

I must leave to the reader the task of forming his 
own estimate both of the author of these thoughts 
and of the thoughts themselves. My business has 
been to record faithfully: let others judge. 

Concerning his outward life, little need be said — 
little, indeed, can be said by me, since the materials 
for a complete biographical sketch have not come 
into my possession. At the time when I first be- 
came acquainted with him, he was living quietly 
and in seclusion, contented with his books and with 
a very limited circle of friends. For some years ne 
was blessed with the companionship of a charming 
and devoted wife, and his home was brightened by 
the presence of a little daughter ; but they both died, 
and he was left alone. To this heavy loss he seldom 
alluded ; indeed, he rarely broke through the reserve 
he maintained on personal matters, and it was only 
from casual allusions that I discovered that he had 
had a University education, and that at one time he 
had contemplated entering the Christian ministry. 
I never ascertained why he abandoned that inten- 
tion. 

The possession of a private income exempted him 
from the necessity of exerting himself to obtain a 
livelihood ; and it was probably the lack of this stim- 
ulus which prevented him from completing before 
his death the work which he had undertaken. 

[SJ 



INTRODUCTION 

After the death of his wife and child he lived in 
almost complete retirement; not because this afflic- 
tion had made him misanthropic, but because he had 
nothing to check his predisposition for solitude and 
meditation. Nevertheless, he found opportunities 
for accomplishing much quiet benevolence. 

The main interest of his life, however, centers in 
his thoughts. He was essentially a thinker; if not 
an original thinker, at least an independent one. 

In the spirit of an earnest seeker after Truth, he 
doubted, questioned, probed, with a boldness which 
frequently alarmed the more timid of his friends, 
and a persistency which embarrassed and fatigued 
the less thoughtful. And he had his reward; he 
sought, and he found. Had it been otherwise — 
had he failed, or had he arrived at merely negative 
conclusions, I would never have undertaken the 
task of giving the results of his thinking to the 
world. But there were such clear evidences, both 
in his calm and trustful spirit while he lived, and 
also in the manuscripts in which he was endeavor- 
ing to record the results of his thinking, that he did 
not seek in vain, but at length "beat his music out," 
and apprehended a by no means small amount of 
the Truth for which he so earnestly sought, that 
my duty in the matter seemed plain. 

The responsibility of withholding what might be 
helpful to so many who in these days are bewildered 
and perplexed by the conflicting voices of the age, 
seemed to me far greater than the responsibility of 
arranging and publishing it; and I accordingly un- 
dertook the task. It is in the hope that the thoughts 
of a man who combined great independence of 

[6] 



INTRODUCTION 

thought, and no ordinary boldness of speculation, 
with the deepest faith in God, and the purest devo- 
tion and love for Jesus Christ, may help some who 
read to attain to the same faith and love, that I give 
these memorials of him to the world. 



[7] 



CHAPTER I 

TRUTH 

My friend was a seeker after Truth. This, com- 
bined with a striking independence of mind, was his 
most marked characteristic. You could not be in 
his society five minutes without discovering it. His 
perfect and loyal devotion to Truth was the bed- 
rock on which his character rested. Even those 
who did not understand the cause felt the effect from 
the moment of coming into his presence. They 
admitted not only that he "had a way of his own of 
putting things," but also that he had a manner of 
his own which impressed them greatly. 

I have decided that I cannot do better than de- 
vote this first chapter to the attempt to make the 
reader acquainted with this characteristic of my 
friend, as far as possible, by means of selections 
from his notes. 

He was a man who, while he earnestly and dili- 
gently sought for Truth, was never content to ac- 
cept it without investigating the grounds on which 
it rested. He thought for himself; was not afraid 
to form his own opinions, and to hold them in the 
face of the world. 

"I must think for myself," he writes in one of 
his note-books. "I cannot allow any other man, 
or any number of men, to do it for me. With the 
faculties and powers with which I have been en- 

[8] 



TRUTH 

dowed by Heaven I will examine this great Uni- 
verse for myself, and see if it will respond to me; 
whether, if I knock persistently, the door of Truth 
will at length open to me; whether, if I seek dili- 
gently, I shall find satisfaction for the needs and 
cravings of my nature. I am conscious enough of 
my littleness, my feebleness. The illimitable vast- 
ness of the Universe at times appalls me. But 
surely, if I cannot find out the secrets for myself, 
I cannot rely on the conclusions which others, 
similarly constituted and environed, may have 
arrived at in their attempts to unravel mysteries. 
I do not refuse their aid. I will thankfully benefit 
by their experience, when that is possible, and 
gladly listen to any answers which, when they have 
questioned it reverently, desiring light and truth, 
they may report to me that the Universe has re- 
turned to their questioning. More especially will 
I attend to them when they seem to have gained 
knowledge, or light, or joy, or peace, which I have 
not. Can I afford to do otherwise, any more than 
the mariner alone upon the sea can afford to refuse 
to listen to the news of land, of current, or of storm 
which other voyagers may report that they have 
encountered on their way? 

"But more than this I cannot do. Whether 
their experiences are true or false, I must voyage 
on, and prove them to be the one or the other by 
my own experience. A messenger direct from the 
Eternal would not benefit me, unless I not only 
believed his message but voyaged as he told me. 
Otherwise I should but continue to toss on the 

[9] 



TRUTH 

heaving waves, or to drift helplessly with the tides 
and before the storms." 

I find another note in a similar strain in another 
of his note-books — 

"I cannot be content with any other man's ex- 
planation of the facts of life, or with the inductions 
which he has made from them. Are not the facts 
there for me to see too ? and have I not also a mind 
capable of combining and arranging them ? Another 
man's observations and explanations are, without 
doubt, valuable, since they help me to see for my- 
self, and, if they are true, I shall no doubt sooner 
or later succeed in verifying them. But I should 
scorn myself if I accepted them without making 
any attempt to find out whether they were so or 
not. I would far rather stand before men and say, 
'I do not know; I do not understand; I have no 
theory,' than pretend — by advocating a theory 
which I had not attempted to verify — that I had 
unravelled the complex mass of phenomena of 
which it claims to be the explanation, and reduced 
them to order, when, as a matter of fact, they still 
remained for me among the unknown, or, at any 
rate, the undigested facts of the Universe." 

My friend had the greatest reverence for facts. 
In considering them he always tried to get rid of 
all prejudice, and to avoid prepossessions. He 
was not a man to rush to conclusions, either. He 
always hesitated to formulate a theory until he 
thought he had a sufficient number of facts before 
him, and sufficiently understood their significance 
and their mutual relations to justify him in so 
doing. Even then he only advanced his theory 

[10] 



TRUTH 

tentatively, and was always willing to abandon it 
when he found that new facts, or perhaps a recon- 
sideration of the old ones, rendered it untenable. 

"There are two ways," he writes, "of dealing 
with the facts with which experience acquaints us. 
The first one — the way which most people adopt — 
is to try to compress the facts to the mould of some 
theory shaped out of partial and unverified pre- 
possessions, and to ignore all such other facts as 
are out of harmony with this theory. 

"The other — and more excellent way — is to 
make it a first duty to accept, and to give due 
weight to, every fact, however strange and out of 
harmony with our preconceptions or our previous 
experience it may be; and, if we formulate theories 
at all (as indeed we must), to hold them with suffi- 
cient lightness of grasp to enable us to surrender 
them if necessary; or, if such a necessity does not 
arise, to modify them so as to bring them into har- 
mony with our enlarging experience. 

"No genuine seeker after Truth can, for long, 
rest content with any theory or system of thought 
which attempts to 'explain' the Universe. His 
views will broaden, and its generalizations contin- 
ually require to be modified, as Truth in its beauty 
unveils her face to the worshipper. 

"The mind which tenaciously clings to any one 
theory or system of thought builds for itself a 
prison-house, shuts itself up in a little imaginary 
world of its own creation, bearing little relation to 
the real world around it, and is prevented from 
seeing that real world aright, as people who' put 
on spectacles which do not suit their sight are hin- 

[Hi 



TRUTH 

dered by them from seeing things around them." 

In another place he writes — 

"The tendency to generalize — to formulate a 
theory, to attempt an explanation which will unify 
the knowledge which we are continually acquiring 
of the Universe — is one native to the mind. But 
it is evident that since experience is continually en- 
larging, a man must be prepared to modify contin- 
ually the theories which he constructs to 'explain' 
his experiences, otherwise thought and life will 
speedily find themselves at variance. 

"But a very large number of men have neither 
the strength of mind nor the inclination continually 
to modify their theories after they have once formed 
them. Often a foolish pride makes them hold to 
those they have first adopted, and causes them to 
shut their eyes to all those facts which will not 
harmonize with them. This is fatal to both intel- 
lectual and spiritual growth. 

"There is no doubt that there are many subjects 
concerning which we have not yet collected sufficient 
data to justify the formation of any theory at all. 
When, in spite of this, men do formulate their theo- 
ries — filling up the gaps in their knowledge from 
the stores of the imagination — they almost inva- 
riably blindfold their eyes to the truth, and perma- 
nently incapacitate themselves from seeing it. It 
is quite possible to recognize facts without being 
able to reconcile them; the man who keeps himself 
alive to facts and his mind open to the reception of 
new ones, but refrains from hasty attempts to gen- 
eralize from them, is much nearer Truth than the 

[12] 



TRUTH 

man who is ready on the shortest notice with a 
theory on every question under the sun. 

"With regard to a considerable number of the 
great problems of life, I am convinced that it is best 
not to have any theory at all. He was a wise 
man who said that the chief thing in life was not to 
solve its great problems, but to feel them greatly." 

Very considerable credit is due to my friend for 
being able to write as he does in the above extracts. 
For I gathered from him that, in his earlier years, 
he had been much under the bondage of theories, 
which had greatly hampered his mental develop- 
ment. "I inherited," he told me on one occasion, 
"a very large stock of prejudices and prepossessions, 
which it took me a good many years, and an im- 
mense amount of trouble, to get rid of." 

He was very reticent on this subject, and I 
never got to understand fully this stage of his 
intellectual development. Nor have I been able 
to find among his manuscripts more than a few 
— and those mostly indirect — allusions to it. I 
gathered, however, from his occasional references 
to it in conversation, that it was a time of deep 
gloom and depression, the memory of which was 
extremely painful to him. 

The following note, which I have found in one 
of his earlier note-books, was apparently written 
during this time of doubt and conflict, and gives a 
glimpse of the workings of his mind : — 

"How few men rise above their age — above the 
thoughts, habits, customs, and views of life which 
happen to< be in vogue ! 

"How they go about their daily work, and take 

[13] 



TRUTH 

their daily pleasures — these thoughtless millions — 
as if they stood on solid ground, ignorant of the 
fact that there is but a thin film separating them 
from — from what? Break the crust of habit, 
examine the conventions, the views of life, the 
current axioms of men: what are they worth? 
Do they correspond with reality? Do they give 
a correct or adequate account of life, of the world, 
of God? Far from it! 

"The ground which most men think is solid is 
not bottom rock; it is only a film, the hardened 
scum which the slow-moving centuries have accu- 
mulated over the molten stream of existence. 
When you break through it, you find yourself face 
to face with great realities, mighty mysteries, in 
the awful presence of which your theories, your 
explanations, your Views/ are seen to be totally 
inadequate, if not ridiculous. 

"You find yourself in the presence of a vast sys- 
tem of things of which you know neither the whence 
nor the whither. The great mystery that you are 
is matched by the equally great mystery that you 
are in the presence of a mighty Something which is 
not you. 

"What is the nature, the character of that 
Something? Is there an order, a harmony, a 
purpose in it, which we can discover, and with 
which we can get into harmony — Thought to 
match our thought, Will to match our will, a 
Heart to beat in sympathy with our heart. Love 
to meet our love? Can we trust it? Will it 
respond to our trust, meet our needs, satisfy 
us? 

[14] 



TRUTH 

"It is easy to ask these questions ; but how diffi- 
cult to find the true answer to them ! For my own 
part, I can at present only see what the answer 
ought to be. I am by no means prepared to assert 
confidently that this answer is the true one. What 
I do see is that either there must be complete satis- 
faction for all my desires, hopes, aspirations, and 
capacities in this Great Something not ourselves; 
i. e. it must be infinitely perfect, infinitely good, or 
it were better for me, better for every son of man, 
that he had never been born." 

In the following fragment also, though it was 
written (as the date at the commencement of the 
note-book shows) several years later, and does not 
directly refer to his own experiences, traces of the 
mental crisis through which he passed can, I think, 
be discovered: — 

"It is a striking fact that many — in fact, I think, 
most — of the men whom the world has come to 
regard as its noblest and best have had to undergo 
a period of great mental unrest and spiritual dark- 
ness before they have arrived at that clearness of 
vision which has constituted their greatness. They 
have had — all of them, without an exception, so 
far as I know — to be born again. 

"They have been aroused from their contented 
acceptance of the ideas and conventions of the 
times in which their lot has been cast, by doubts 
and questionings which they could not stifle. The 
crust of received opinion on the great questions of 
life has crumbled beneath their feet. They have 
asked themselves the startling question, 'On what 
ground of certainty does my life, as I am living it, 

[15] 



TRUTH 

rest?' And they have found, to their utter dis- 
may, that neither their intellectual conceptions nor 
their moral conduct has been based on anything 
which they can recognize as convincingly stable 
and authoritative. They have suddenly found 
themselves face to face with the awful mystery 
of life, in a strange, unknown Universe, with all 
old landmarks obliterated or discredited, and no 
new ones discernible. 

"An awful position! One which only the 
bravest souls have been able to face successfully; 
one from which even strong souls have shrunk ap- 
palled, and have desperately clung to any piece of 
wreckage which seemed to offer them support in the 
midst of the floods of great waters which have 
surged around them. 

"But some have refused to give way to despair, 
even when all the old landmarks have been swept 
away, and the ordered world they have known has 
dissolved to a chaos. They have resolutely, daunt- 
lessly determined to pursue the quest of Truth, 
even though all that they once deemed Truth has 
become to them a lie. They have stood up before 
the Universe, and boldly demanded to know what 
it is. 

"And they have not demanded in vain. As 
they have watched and waited, questioned and 
probed, the old landmarks have one by one re- 
appeared — the old landmarks which for them are 
no longer old but new, because they have, by hard 
experience, verified them. They have succeeded 
in disentangling from the rubbish and the fungus- 
growths, in which they have been embedded, the 

[16] 



TRUTH 

eternal truths of the Universe, and have hencefor- 
ward ranked as seers — men who have based their 
lives, not on what other men have seen and thought 
and believed, but on the Truth as they themselves 
have seen and known it." 

If I had been able, I would very gladly have 
made the reader more fully acquainted with this 
most interesting portion of my friend's history. 
But, as I have said, he seldom alluded to it, and 
with the exception of the above extracts, I can find 
no references to it in his manuscripts. 

I remember, however, that on one occasion, he 
spoke to me about that period of his life with some 
freedom — the only occasion, so far as I can re- 
member, on which he broke through his reserve; 
and what he then said produced such a deep im- 
pression on my mind, that I am able to recall 
almost word for word the statement he then made 
to me. We were talking of the basis of religious 
certitude, and he alluded to his own early ex- 
perience. 

"I wanted to know the Truth/' he said, "for I 
felt then, as I still feel, that if satisfaction cannot 
be found by getting to know the Universe as it is y 
no permanent satisfaction can be arrived at by im- 
agining it to be what it is not. I felt that if it is 
hopeless to gain satisfaction from reality, it is in- 
finitely more hopeless to try to win it from delusion. 
It is hopeless for any man to try to live in security 
in an imaginary world; sooner or later he must 
come face to face with the truth, and if the truth is 
different from what he imagined, and does not jus- 
tify the hopes and respond to the feelings which he 

[17] 



TRUTH 

has cherished, he will only find himself in a deeper 
hell who imagined that there was Love where there 
was only fate, and a Father's Heart where there 
was nothing but inexorable law. 

"Therefore," he continued, "I was determined, 
if it was within my power to do so, to discover the 
Truth. Could I find in the Universe satisfaction 
for the deepest needs of my nature — for my spiritual 
capacities, cravings, and aspirations — even as I 
found satisfaction for my physical and intellectual 
faculties in the ordered world around me? or were 
these given to me only to delude, to mock, to damn 
me? I felt that I must either assure myself that 
the former alternative was the one which expressed 
the truth, assure myself that it was possible to 
attain to a life which was full and harmonious, 
because it was the result of the exercise of all the 
faculties of my complex nature (and I was con- 
scious then, as I am conscious now, that the faculty, 
the craving — call it what you will — which made me 
yearn for love was the master-faculty and passion 
of my nature), — I say I felt that I must discover 
whether this was true, whether the Universe would 
respond to and satisfy all my needs, or whether it 
would (or could) not. To remain in doubt was 
torture to me. I felt that I would prefer to be defi- 
nitely assured that the latter alternative was the 
correct one rather than remain in uncertainty. 'And 
if that is the truth,' I said to myself, T will cloak 
myself in a proud disdain of the Universe, and the 
demoniacal spirit who, in that case, is the central 
essence, and show by a stoical endurance and an un- 
wearied defiance that I will never consent to be his 

[18] 



TRUTH 

tool or plaything, but am his superior, even in the 
midst of my misery and despair.' " 

They were bold words — many will think far too 
bold — but I give them as I remember them (they 
made an indelible impression on my mind), because 
they so clearly reveal the spirit of the man. He 
was not required to carry them into effect; if he 
had been, this book would never have been written. 
In the following pages the reader will find abundant 
evidence of the fact that he found at length that 
satisfaction for his spiritual needs for which he so 
earnestly longed and so diligently sought, and in 
his later years based his life confidently and joyfully 
on the truth that God is Love. 

It will be as well if, at this point, I endeavor to 
make the reader acquainted with the attitude which 
my friend adopted in his search for Truth. A clear 
understanding of his position will greatly help the 
reader in his perusal of the following chapters. 

He took his stand on consciousness. "Here am 
I, with my various faculties and capacities," he said 
to me on one occasion ; "and there is the great Not-I 
all around me. Any knowledge which I can gain 
of this Not-I must be limited by the sum-total of 
the impressions which can affect my consciousness. 
All modes of the Not-I which cannot thus affect me 
must be unknown and unknowable to me ; any truth 
which my faculties are not able to apprehend — 
which it is not their function to recognize and re- 
spond to — must be to me as if non-existent." 

This position, however, did not lead him, as it 
has led so many in these days, to agnosticism, or 
to the denial of all religion. He was unable to 

[19] 



TRUTH 

adopt the meagre creed which has apparently satis- 
fied so many thoughtful men of the present genera- 
tion. While sympathizing to a large extent with 
the scientific spirit of the age, the conclusions which 
so many of its representatives had arrived at on the 
deepest questions of life were to him eminently un- 
satisfactory. He had a large heart, and, though he 
did not realize this till long afterwards, he thirsted 
for the living God. 

Groping for light, the question at length pre- 
sented itself to him — whether he might not have 
other faculties than those which scientific men 
exercise in their investigations, and whether, by the 
right use of these, he might not be able to apprehend 
higher truths than those which concern phenomena, 
and so win that light and joy and love for which his 
spirit longed. 

Taking the natural promptings of his heart as 
his guide, he set out on the quest for spiritual truth. 
And he did not seek in vain. 

By slow degrees the conviction on which, in his 
later years, he based all his thinking — all his life — 
took possession of him. Baldly stated, that convic- 
tion was, that if a man trustfully exercises the 
higher, the heart faculties which he possesses, he 
will find the Non-Ego respond, just as surely as it 
responds when a man exercises any of the other 
faculties with which he has been endowed. He 
became increasingly convinced of the reality and 
the supreme worth of "the things which are not 
seen" — of a "Spiritual Universe" — with which man 
can sustain relations ("correspond" is the term he 
most frequently made use of) by means of his "spir- 

[20] 



TRUTH 

itual faculties," as certainly as he can "correspond" 
with the material universe by means of his senses 
and intellect. As he grew older, he held with in- 
creasing firmness to the belief that the Universe can 
be resolved into tones of Love by the exercise of the 
"heart faculties," just as surely as it can be resolved 
into Law by the exercise of the intellectual faculties. 

This conviction — this belief — he arrived at, as 
I have said, by slow degrees. The evidences that 
he was winning his way to it are almost entirely 
lacking in the earlier manuscripts, and it is only 
fully and clearly set forth in those which were writ- 
ten within a short time of his death. He could not 
have written thus in his earlier years — 

"Not with the intellect, but with the heart, must 
we discover what the heart of the Universe is — 
whether it responds to our longings, needs, and 
aspirations with cold indifference or passionless 
Law, or throbs in sympathy with all our fears and 
pains and woes, yearns with a mother's tenderness 
to soothe and comfort us, and with an inexhaust- 
ible patience watches over us through all the mis- 
takes and sins of our lives, only refusing to remove 
the causes of our woes because it knows that it is 
only by helping us to rise victoriously above them 
that we can be educated for that perfect bliss of 
living which, most assuredly, is in store for the soul 
that has tuned the discords of its being to the har- 
mony and the infinite sweetness of the music of its 
heart of Love." 

But as the reader proceeds, he will find this con- 
viction becoming more and more the key-note of 
all his thinking; he will find him dwelling more 

[21] 



TRUTH 

and more on the truth that God is Love, as the cen- 
tral truth of life. 

The spiritual convictions to which my friend 
attained necessarily made their influence felt on his 
philosophical conceptions. He regarded philoso- 
phy as the handmaiden of religion. He looked to 
religion for the solution of many of the problems 
which philosophy despaired of solving; he looked 
to philosophy to place religion in a position which 
would ensure it the esteem of all thoughtful, earnest 
men. 

"The heart and the intellect have no right to be 
at variance," he writes. "If they are both allowed 
free scope, while at the same time they recognize 
their mutual dependence, they will bear witness 
with united voice to the infinite Truth which they 
have the power to apprehend — the Truth, in ap- 
prehending which they find their life. Only, in 
dignity and importance the heart must always rank 
before the intellect; for Truth as apprehended by 
the intellect can never be more than relatively true ; 
it is the heart that apprehends .the Real." 

Following this line of thought, his constant en- 
deavor was to supplement all his intellectual knowl- 
edge by spiritual knowledge, and as far as possible 
to express, in terms of this higher knowledge, the 
conclusions at which his intellect arrived concern- 
ing man, and life, and God. 

"Browning is right: 'All's Love, and all's Law.' 
But Love is higher than Law, and if ever we are to 
apprehend this great scheme of things in the midst 
of which we find ourselves as a unity, and to behold 
all forces and all phenomena radiating from one 

[22] 



TRUTH 

point, and controlled by one impulse, it will have to 
be as the infinitely varied manifestations of Love — 
Love which is at one and the same time both Force 
and Law — the ultimate, eternal Spiritual Fact. But 
this truth can only be apprehended by hearts that 
love." 

A somewhat longer note may be appropriately 
inserted here, as it throws some light on the char- 
acter of his thinking, and foreshadows those devel- 
opments of it which I have attempted to embody in 
the succeeding chapters. 

"Truth is like the eternal stars in the infinite 
vault of heaven; our conceptions of it are like the 
fantastic shapes which men draw on the celestial 
map, by which the position of these is roughly de- 
fined. Most men only look at the map, and so 
never gain more than a second-hand idea of Truth. 
To them the vision of Truth is not an 'open vision/ 
They content themselves with other men's reports 
of what is to be seen. Truth's sublime features 
are only dimly (and often grotesquely) presented 
to them through the medium of other minds. Few 
look straight at the eternal heavens; but when they 
do, what becomes of theories and systems, the Great 
Bears and Orions of the map of truth ? 

"Very strange it is, when we come to think about 
it, that so many men — the majority of the race, in 
point of fact — should be content to exist in this un- 
real world of ideas, these (by them) unverified 
conceptions of truth. They are surrounded by real- 
ities ; and yet they prefer to accept other men's state- 
ments concerning these realities, and in the ma- 
jority of cases make no attempt to verify them. 

[23] 



TRUTH 

"Concerning religious truths especially, we see 
this strange preference most widely displayed; in- 
deed, there is as yet no general recognition of the 
fact that religious views can be tested in this way, 
that they are no more than the formulated expres- 
sions of truths everywhere discernible by the seeing 
eye. 

"A widespread delusion has prevailed in all ages 
of the world's history, and still prevails, that the 
truths of religion have no* direct bearing on the life 
which men live in the world, that they only deal 
with the life which is to come. 

"Not regarding religious matters, therefore, as 
matters of immediate and vital interest, they have 
relegated them to a professional class — to the priest- 
hood — which itself, in the vast majority of cases, 
has had no vital grasp of Truth, but has merely re- 
tailed it second-hand. 

"Men's minds have thus lost touch with reality. 
Their only acquaintance with Truth has been 
'through a glass, darkly' — the glass of other men's 
minds, — not 'face to face.' 

"It may be quite true that the ideas of Truth 
which they have accepted have not infrequently 
been the best intellectual expressions of spiritual 
realities which the men who formulated them 
(attempting to record their experiences and con- 
victions of 'things not seen') could employ. But 
however admirable these intellectual expressions 
of Truth may be, and however accurately they may 
have presented (or, rather, represented) the vision 
of Truth which those who formulated them saw, 
they are of little value to the man who has not veri- 

[24] 



TRUTH 

fied them for himself. For unless a man thus veri- 
fies the reports of others concerning the Real, he 
cannot become alive to the truth of which they are 
the intellectual expression. They do not represent 
to him the Facts of the Universe, truths in which he 
lives, and moves, and has his being. 

"A man may indeed, and many men do, live by 
these unverified ideas, — may regulate his conduct, 
and form his notions of life and of God from them. 
But that is a very different thing from living in 
conscious relation with the realities of which they 
are the intellectual expression; and his conception 
of things — his entire intellectual world — will be 
continually in danger of being shaken, if not re- 
duced to chaos, by the ruthless intrusion of facts 
not taken into account in the scheme he has 
accepted as 'the truth.' 

"I do not ignore the fact that there is a stage of 
spiritual childhood, as well as of physical childhood, 
through which every man must pass — a stage dur- 
ing which he must be dependent on others, and must 
accept the statements concerning spiritual things 
which they impart to him. Law with its servi- 
tude is a necessary preliminary to the Gospel with 
its freedom. But it should never be forgotten that 
this is a childish state, pertaining only to the begin- 
nings of life, and by no means to be rested in. 

"I yield all honor to the man who, while his 
faith is weak and his knowledge of spiritual things 
small, accepts and strives to live by what others tell 
him about the eternal realities. But if he is in even 
the smallest degree in vital touch with these reali- 
ties (or as soon as ever he gets into vital touch with 

[25] 



TRUTH 

them) ; — if, or as soon as ever faith is living, and 
knowledge, true knowledge, — emancipation from 
servile adhesion to the conceptions and the teaching 
of spiritual schoolmasters is bound to commence, 
and, sooner or later, to be completely achieved. 
Such a man will come to know the Real with a true, 
direct knowledge, and as he does this he will not 
merely be able, but will feel constrained, to mould 
his conceptions of it into such forms as are to him 
most true and helpful" 

The reader can hardly have failed to observe that 
in the preceding extracts my friend endeavors to 
avoid using the term "God." In the succeeding 
chapters the same peculiarity frequently appears, 
and I may as well say a word or two obout it here. 

He had no prejudice against the word; indeed, 
he says (in a note too long to quote here) that he 
would have preferred it, if its connotation had not 
been so variable and so uncertain. He very truly 
remarks that "the word 'God' conveys a different 
meaning to every person who uses it; in using it 
every one reads into it the particular ideas with 
which it is associated in his own mind." 

For this reason, as well as because he was of the 
opinion that the use of other terms gave freshness 
to his thought, and enabled him to apprehend more 
firmly the eternal truths which he was attempting 
to lay hold of — "those eternal truths which, though 
they have been known for ages, must be rediscov- 
ered by nearly every generation, and reclothed in 
the language which best suits the intellectual needs 
and the spiritual enlightenment of the age" — he pre- 
ferred to make use of other terms. 

[26] 



TRUTH 

The one he perhaps most frequently employs is 
the term "Universe." By it he does not mean sim- 
ply the material universe, but "all manifestations 
and impressions of the Non-Ego which affect our 
consciousness — the sum-total of the world without 
us, of which we can gain knowledge by the exercise 
of all the parts and faculties, physical, mental, and 
spiritual, of our nature." 

The reader will do well to bear this definition 
of the term in mind, and to remember that in my 
friend's mind it was associated with all those ideas 
with which the term "God" is associated in the 
minds of those who have the loftiest and most spir- 
itual conceptions of the Deity. 

It will be observed, however, that he does not 
confine himself to this term. Whether because he 
felt at times that it was cold and unsatisfactory, or 
because he felt it to be helpful to vary his phrase- 
ology, or perhaps because the religious teaching of 
his early years had left too strong an impression on 
his mind to permit him to discard altogether the 
language in which it had been conveyed to him, I 
do not know. Certain it is that he not infrequently 
— especially in his later years — used in addition 
such terms as "the Eternal," "the Eternal Spirit," 
"the Eternal Fact," and others. He seemed, in 
fact, to feel habitually the inadequacy of language 
to depict the truths which he strove to express. He 
is continually on the lookout for new terms in 
which to embody his thought, while all the time he 
is haunted by the conviction that the great realities 
he is endeavoring to unfold can never be adequately 
set forth in terms of human speech. 

[27I 



TRUTH 

That his avoidance of the term "God" did not 
result from the absence of strong religious convic- 
tions will, I think, be already evident to the reader. 
He was undoubtedly "unorthodox," — unconven- 
tional to an extreme in his mode of expressing them, 
but the following extract will convince all thought- 
ful minds that he was a religious man in the truest 
and deepest sense of the term : — 

"The doctrine of the Fatherhood of God ex- 
presses the truth that the Universe will sustain to 
us relations of a similar kind to those which a father 
sustains to his children — relations which the par- 
ental relationship alone, of all human relationships, 
can adequately typify. The character of this rela- 
tionship, and the moral and spiritual basis on which 
alone it can be fully established, necessitates the be- 
lief that the Universe is possessed of life of at least 
as high a quality as the life which we possess — life 
endowed with powers of a similar order to our 
highest powers, those powers the possession of 
which alone enables us to sustain this relationship, 
i. e. the powers which belong to personality. What- 
ever further modes of life the Universe may be pos- 
sessed of, whatever may be the ultimate nature of 
that ineffable Spirit which fills the fathomless 
abysses of space, and the endless years of eternity 
with the pulses of the timeless life, of this at least 
the truth which the doctrine of the Fatherhood of 
God endeavors to express, assures us : — that we can 
lean on it as the infant leans on its mother's breast, 
can look up to it with trust and love as a child looks 
up to his father, and can derive from it complete 
satisfaction for all the deepest cravings of our na- 

[28] 



TRUTH 

ture — those deepest cravings which make the joys 
of home the sweetest joys of life, but are not there- 
with wholly satisfied, but look beyond for that 
deeper satisfaction which only communion with the 
Eternal Spirit can bring. 

"The Universe, I repeat, could not give us this 
satisfaction, could not sustain these relations with 
us, were it not possessed of life as we are possessed 
of life, i. e. if it had not a living will, a will animated 
by that disposition, tuned to that key-note, which 
is the only key-note to which the human relation- 
ship of father and son can be rightly tuned — the 
key-note of love. A stone, a mountain, or a tree 
cannot sustain these relations with us, cannot dis- 
play fatherly qualities ; nor could the Universe if it 
were nothing more than an aggregate of these. 
These relations are peculiar to personalities : in 
order to sustain them the Universe must be pos- 
sessed of Personality. 

"The record stands out in the pages of history 
that some men — nay, many men — have found by 
living experience that the Universe can sustain these 
relations with man. They have found that it pos- 
sesses not merely those properties which the mate- 
rial universe exhibits, not merely life to the degree 
in which life manifests itself in the lower creation, 
but life as we are acquainted with it in its highest 
forms in humanity — in fatherhood and motherhood. 

"But this experience can only be enjoyed by those 
who put themselves into the fitting attitude, the 
attitude of sonship. Not till man adopts the filial 
attitude towards the Universe, and approaches it in 
the filial spirit, does he place himself in a position to 

[29] 



TRUTH 

discover whether it is capable of sustaining, and 
willing to sustain, this relationship with him; 
whether it will respond to, and prove itself worthy 
of, the trust he reposes in it ; whether it can and will 
repay love with love; whether to those who cry to 
it, 'My Father,' it will with satisfying clearness 
reply, 'My Child.' 

"I am convinced that no one who has reverently, 
perseveringly, and in sincerity put the Universe to 
that test has ever been disappointed with the result." 

Before I conclude this introductory chapter, I 
think that I am justified in including in it the fol- 
lowing note. It was written, I believe, not long 
before my friend died, and its tone of calm confi- 
dence witnesses convincingly to the fact that he was 
one of those who have "striven, achieving calm," 
and that his thoughts on life, and man, and God 
were 

"Thoughts which at last shall lead 
To some clear, firm assurance of a satisfying creed." 

"A wise passivity is the true secret of living. It 
is a thousand pities that man is so often occupied 
and distracted by speculations about himself, his 
nature, his destiny, and the like, instead of accept- 
ing with cheerful confidence the constitution with 
which his Maker has endowed him, and lying open, 
with all his faculties alert, to the sweet influences 
which Heaven is ceaselessly bringing to bear upon 
him. 

"Truth comes — is bound to come — to the man 
who leaves his doors open. We are only wasting 

[30] 



TRUTH 

time and energy when we shut the doors and curi- 
ously examine our interiors. 

"Leave speculations; live! — with faculties alive 
to every impression; with a mind prepared to re- 
ceive every new truth, however strange and start- 
ling; with a spirit surrendered to the guidance of 
its primary instincts, faith and love; and slowly, 
perhaps, but surely, thou shalt glide into the infinite 
ocean of Truth, and shalt find light, and wisdom, 
and beauty, and righteousness, and joy, and love 
more than sufficient to satisfy all thy cravings, as 
thou art borne further and further upon its infinite 
expanse. 

"Truth will never disappoint, will never fail to 
satisfy the seeker. The Universe contains infinite 
heights and depths of it, — an inexhaustible store, 
ever awaiting appropriation, never to be fully ap- 
propriated. The finite cannot exhaust the infinite, 
but it can derive unending joy and delight from the 
endeavor to exhaust it, and never-failing satisfac- 
tion for ever-expanding powers. 

"This is the high, the eternal life which man has 
been created to live, and he who elects to live it will 
find that it is supremely good, supremely satisfying. 
Ever seeking and ever finding Truth, and living in 
and by it as he finds it, he will be able to say to every 
querulous objector, to every disappointed worldling, 
to every sneering sceptic, 'Let life seem what it may 
to you, to me to live is continuously a satisfying de- 
light, a sufficient justification alike of my own ex- 
istence and of the ways of Him who made me.' ' 

Such, in the tone and temper of his mind, in the 
earnestness with which he sought for Truth, in the 

[31] 



TRUTH 

spirit in which he grappled with the great problems 
of life, in the way in which he, after strife, "achieved 
calm," was my friend, as I knew him when alive, 
and as I have found him to be in his writings. Of 
him it may be truly said — 

"He fought his doubts, and gather'd strength: 
He would not make his judgment blind; 
He faced the spectres of the mind 
And laid them: thus he came at length 
To find a stronger faith his own." 

In the following chapters, the notes of which are, 
indeed, in many cases, only expansions and devel- 
opments of the thoughts embodied in the extracts 
I have given in this one — the reader may find much 
that he will be unable to agree with, but nothing, 
I think (at any rate my friend thought), radically 
inconsistent with, or essentially out of harmony 
with, the fundamental conviction at which, after 
long conflict, he arrived, on which he rested, and 
into tune with which he endeavored most earnestly 
to bring all his thoughts, and all his life (to hold and 
to live by which surely entitles a man to the name of 
Christian) — the conviction that God is Love. 



[32] 



CHAPTER II. 



MANKIND 



The problems involved in the existence and the 
present condition of the human race exercised a 
peculiar fascination over my friend, and were stud- 
ied by him with the keenest interest. His notes on 
these subjects are very numerous, and in the pres- 
ent chapter I put before the reader a few selections. 
They are most of them from his earlier manu- 
scripts, and in the succeeding chapters some modi- 
fications of the views embodied in some of these 
extracts will probably be noted ; but the reader will 
find in them all that note of faith, that deep and 
sincere conviction of the wisdom and goodness of 
the Creator, which appears more and more clearly 
in all that he wrote after he had emerged from that 
conflict with doubt to which I have alluded in the 
previous chapter. 

The following extract will give the reader some 
idea of the point of view from which he contem- 
plated mankind : — 

"Human nature, as we see it, presents the spec- 
tacle of conditioned personality, as yet not fully 
acquainted with or having full control over its con- 
ditions, nor having fully adjusted them to its envi- 
ronment. 

"The extent and the right use of his powers man 

[33] 



MANKIND 

is at present learning from experience; but he has 
as yet only imperfectly succeeded in doing either; 
hence the sin, the misery, and the confusion of life. 
"Why the Eternal should allow man thus to find 
out his powers for himself, and the right use of 
them, we cannot say, any more than we can say 
why He has given human nature the powers and 
constitution which it has, instead of a different one ; 
why, that is to say, He has conditioned personality 
as we find it to be conditioned, with a body, with 
five senses, and with a mind. Can we, however, 
conceive of any other plan (than this of allowing 
humanity to find out for itself the extent and right 
use of its powers) which would have better suited a 
being endowed with the power of choice? The 
ultimate reason of the great world-development in 
which we find ourselves we cannot know; but since 
the Eternal has adopted that plan and no other, and 
has given us such a constitution as we have and no 
other, more serious objections can be brought for- 
ward against any other plan of bringing man to 
perfection, than against that one which we find the 
Eternal to have adopted. Thus, to have implanted 
in man the plainest intuition as to the right way in 
which to use his powers, could not ensure (inas- 
much as he has the power of choice in the use of 
them) that he would follow that intuition; and any 
compulsion in the use of them would annihilate this 
power of choice. It seems to me that a conditioned 
personality, i. e. a finite being endowed with self- 
consciousness and the power of choice, must inev- 
itably, when it first wakes up to the consciousness 
that it possesses various powers, and the freedom 

[34] 



MANKIND 

to use them (whether it have implanted in it an 
intuition regarding the right use of them or not), 
misuse them, or use them in pure wilfulness, till 
checked by the inevitable consequences resulting 
from such a course of action. Not till it finds out 
by experience that such and such a use of them 
results in pain, misery, and death, will it avoid this 
use or abuse of them ; and it will find out in this way 
(because it has will), however clear the (supposed) 
intuition with regard to the right use of them may 
be. 

"What, then, it can find out in this way, and in 
all probability would (even if it had implanted in it 
clear indications as to the right way to adjust its 
faculties to its environment), have found out in this 
way, in spite of such indications, the Eternal is 
allowing it to find out thus. 

"The Eternal wastes nothing. His means are 
always competent to accomplish His purposes; but 
never more than competent, — there are no super- 
fluous means. And granting that such indications 
could have been implanted in the first place in a 
conditioned personality without hampering its free- 
dom (which seems doubtful), they would have been 
superfluous, seeing that without them it could find 
out from experience what these intuitions would 
convey; and would so find out probably, whether 
they were there or not; scorning all such intuitions 
till experience had taught it to value them, and only 
valuing them to the extent to which experience had 
taught it to do so." 

This, of course, is the doctrine of development, 
which, as I understand him, he would apply to the 

[35] 



MANKIND 

entire nature of man. The same idea comes out in 
the following note on Heredity :— 

"The subject of heredity has not yet received the 
attention it deserves from religious teachers and 
philosophers; for its importance it is almost impos- 
sible to over-estimate. Religion seems dimly to 
have felt this in the importance she attaches to the 
doctrine of original sin. That doctrine contains 
the unscientific statement of the truth ; where it errs 
is in attaching responsibility to the individual for 
the whole sin of the race which he inherits. It was 
forgotten that responsibility only begins when the 
individual begins to use the stock-in-trade of which, 
when he wakes to self-consciousness, he finds him- 
self possessed; since, as he had no hand in provid- 
ing himself with the faculties or the constitution 
which he discovers himself to have, he cannot be 
held responsible for its quality. 

"Religion has hitherto devoted her attention 
almost exclusively to the abstract and less important 
part of the problem, and has left untouched that 
part which deals with the individual. 

"The question as to man's condition when he 
first became a 'living soul,' and the nature of 'the 
Fall' (if Fall there was), is doubtless of great specu- 
lative interest ; but it is speculative, and not practical. 
To lay the burden of accumulated sin, which he 
never committed, had no chance of remedying, and 
probably loathes, on the individual, is monstrous as 
well as absurd. The practical part of the inquiry 
begins with the recognition of the fact that we have 
tendencies within us which require to be curbed and 
corrected, as well as tendencies which should be 

[36] 



MANKIND 

fostered and encouraged; that, owing to the pres- 
ence of 'sin' within us, the duty devolves upon us 
of weeding and pruning the garden of our natures, 
as we'll as the duty of tending and watering. This 
work every man must do for himself, discovering 
by experience where the one or the other is re- 
quired; for since Nature never casts two souls in 
the same mould, no rules which one man may find it 
expedient to work by will do for any one else. 

"Nature gives to every man a certain imperfect 
constitution — a certain stock-in-trade of faculties, 
temperament, etc., and a pattern, an ideal,* by 
which to work, and she says, 'With these materials 
shape me a structure according to this ideal.' 

"The constitution, or stock-in-trade, is different 
for every man; he has had no hand in bringing it 
together, and is not accountable for its production; 
but strictly does Nature demand of him an account 
of the use he makes of it, and strictly does she de- 
mand a reckoning for all waste and all bad work. 

"The patent fact that the ideal, as well as the 
stock-in-trade, is variable, and in no two men alike, 
might at first sight seem to imply partiality and un- 
fairness on Nature's part. But in reality it is not 
so. There is ever a perfect adjustment between the 
ideal and the stock-in-trade; if the stock-in-trade is 
poor, the ideal is low, and the consequent responsi- 
bility is the same, relatively, as when the stock-in- 
trade is good and the accompanying ideal lofty. 

"In fact, the constitution, or stock-in-trade, forms 
its own ideal ; the type necessarily suggests the anti- 

*What he refers to is not quite clear. I imagine that 
he has conscience chiefly in his mind. 

[37] 



MANKIND 

type, as a shadow suggests the sun; and every im- 
provement in the type, or stock-in-trade, is inev- 
itably accompanied by a corresponding improve- 
ment in the antitype or ideal. 

"Hence the reward of faithfulness, the result of 
accepting the responsibility imposed upon us of ap- 
proximating the actual to the ideal, and steadfastly 
endeavoring to realize it, is an improved stock-in- 
trade, and its accompanying higher Ideal — in other 
words, more Life. 

"This is the truth set forth in Christ's parable of 
the talents (Matt. xxv. 14-20; Luke xix. 12-27). 
The man who has ten has to make ten more; the 
man who has one has only to make one more. Hav- 
ing been faithful, they have a greatly increased 
stock-in-trade with which to start again with; for 
bountiful Nature does not reward by simple addi- 
tion, nor even by multiplication; her progression is 
geometric; the faithful user of the ten talents has 
as his reward not ten more talents, but ten cities. 

"The man who would not use his talent has it 
taken away from him, and is cast into the outer 
darkness. So it is in life. The man who faithfully 
tries to use his powers and opportunities finds him- 
self rewarded out of all proportion to his deserts; 
the man who will not use them, but neglects or mis- 
uses them, is shut out from life, from joy, from all 
success. 

"The sweep of heredity stretches across the full 
chord of human powers, from physical character- 
istics up to will and when accorded full recogni- 
tion, leaves scant room for originality. Personality 
itself only just finds standing-room, and in cases 

[38] 



MANKIND 

of insanity is apparently pushed off the board 

"Originality (so called) would seem to be simply 
Nature's cunning mixture in extraordinary fashion 
of traits not commonly (sometimes not previously) 
found in conjunction. Personality is strictly limited 
by the stock-in-trade with which it is endowed, and 
cannot move hand or foot except in obedience to 
the conditions which surround it. But it is ren- 
dered strictly accountable for the use or abuse of 
its stock; by wise use being enabled to expand its 
narrow house till it becomes spacious as the heavens ; 
by abuse building itself a prison in which to fret 
and rave in impotent longing or maddening despair. 
"In thus dwelling on the responsibility which 
rests upon every man of making the best use of 
his stock-in-trade, I do not ignore the fact of the 
Divine Will moulding men. Right relations with 
the Universe can only be entered into by us when 
we hold the conviction that the Eternal desires that 
we should attain to the ideal which we find within 
us, and will co-operate with us in our endeavor to 
attain to it. In other words, we must have faith; 
we must trust that the Power which is at the centre 
of the Universe possesses in perfection all the quali- 
ties which we possess in imperfection; which we 
must have free room to exercise, and fitting nutri- 
ment to satisfy, if peace and happiness are ever to be 
ours. We must trust that if we throw ourselves 
into the stream of tendency, flowing towards what 
we instinctively feel to be the Highest and Best, we 
shall have all the forces of the Universe on our side. 
"Experience will prove whether this is so. But 
we must start from trust. Indeed, we shall be 

[39] 



MANKIND 

obliged continually to fall back on it. For trust 
is the only fitting posture for the finite to assume 
in the presence of the Infinite. Man, in the midst 
of a Universe still in the making, and only one 
among unnumbered millions of spirits new to the 
mystery of existence, and struggling up to light 
through the darkness of error and the mists of 
doubt and sin, cannot presume to understand the 
scope of the beneficent purposes of the Eternal. 
We must trust; co-operate with His purposes as 
far as we can apprehend them, and, by patient 
listening, try to catch more plainly the sound of 
the notes to which the Universe is tuned. 

"And if — as I have come more and more firmly 
to believe — we are justified in reposing an implicit 
faith in the Man Christ Jesus — justified in accepting 
His manifestation of Life as the manifestation of 
the Life of the Eternal, and His manifestation of 
Love as the revelation of the key-note of the Uni- 
verse — then we can face the stern truth of heredity, 
and acknowledge that the Eternal does Visit the 
sins of the fathers on the children, to the third and 
fourth generation,' and yet not despair. We can 
look fairly in the face the fact that we are, in all 
our powers and capacities, all our strength and all 
our weakness, all our virtues and all our vices, the 
product of the generations that are past; — we can 
look that fact full in the face and still hope. These 
constitute the envelope in which our personality has 
been set. But the envelope is not a cast-iron one; 
rather is it plastic as wax, affording every man 
boundless opportunities of attaining to true no- 
bility and dignity, by noble conflict and strong en- 

[40] 



MANKIND 

deavor; affording even the weakest the opportu- 
nity of attaining, through Love, to the measure of 
the stature of the Man Jesus Christ. 

"I do not leave out of sight the fact that none 
ever gain this height in this world — that few even 
so much as remotely approximate to it. I do not 
forget that most men never really come into pos- 
session of themselves here, but simply live in the 
instincts, thoughts, and temperament which are 
their inheritance — at most only dreaming at times. 

"This does not alter the fact that each man can 
possess himself ; nor does it affect the truth that the 
task of attaining to self-possession is the Heaven- 
assigned task for each, and must be accomplished 
before true Life is possible; though it renders un- 
tenable many widely received ideas concerning man 
and his future. 

"This really is the sublime truth of Sonship which 
Jesus Christ enunciated — the life of willing, loving 
response with all his faculties, powers, and affec- 
tions, to the will, purposes, and disposition of the 
Eternal, as man finds these displayed in the Uni- 
verse. Then, and then only, do man and God join 
hands in a union of indissoluble friendship ; and all 
the infinite treasures of the Universe, the treasures 
of boundless Truth, of perfect Light, of rapturous 
Love, are his, then, by right of Sonship. 

"The fact that the world is only beginning to 
recognize this is no proof that it is not true. Many 
of life's secrets have thus been revealed and lost 
sight of again, the world not being at first ready to 
appropriate them. We are fortunate in living in 
an age when this truth is emerging from the mists 

[41] 



MANKIND 

of error and superstition, and, gaining possession 
of men's hearts, and manifesting itself in their lives. 
Doubtless all men will have to grasp it before they 
can really begin to live; and doubtless Heaven is 
still striving, and will continue to strive, to lead up 
to this blessedness all, whether they have passed 
away from this life or not. Only, Heaven is in no 
hurry, and thinks nothing of spending milleniums 
in perfecting her noblest work; nay, thinks nothing 
of spending millions of years in fitting one globe to 
be its temporary abode. 

"And, after all, what better plan than this, of 
allowing both good and bad qualities to be trans- 
mitted from generation to generation, could Heaven 
have adopted? To send every soul perfect into the 
world, or, in other words, to furnish every person- 
ality with a perfect constitution, or stock-in-trade, 
would have involved a new creation whenever a 
child was born. And with no results; for every 
personality, whether robed in a perfect or in an im- 
perfect form, is bound to find out the use and value 
of its various faculties by experience; and (so far 
as we can judge from observation of facts), only 
learns to use them aright after repeated failures. 
A perfectly correct use of them at once annihilates 
personality; leaving no room for the exercise of 
choice. So that the personality which used instinc- 
tively, and with perfect correctness, the powers with 
which he found himself endowed, the first time he 
had an opportunity of exercising them (as the 
newly hatched chicken with unerring aim pecks the 
fly which hovers before it), would indeed be "sin- 
less," but bereft of the highest and the peculiar 

[42] 



MANKIND 

glories of humanity. Thus we see that the gift to 
man of a sinless constitution to start with, would 
be no boon; since 'fall' he must before he can rise. 
Hence the state in which we find ourselves when we 
wake in life — the state of possessing an inharmo- 
nious constitution — is really nearer to true man- 
hood than the 'sinless' state in which it is popularly 
supposed that our first parents were when first cre- 
ated. 

"Personality, immediately it is conditioned, must 
learn by experience what the conditions are, and 
the right use of them. We cannot conceive of the 
results of experience being gained without experi- 
ence. Nor can we conceive of a personal action fore- 
stalling the results of the knowledge which only 
experience gives, and proceeding with calm, un- 
hesitating step into the vast unknown in the midst 
of which it finds itself. Moreover, Natura non 
facit saltus. She never alows any breach of con- 
tinuity, such as would occur if there were no such 
thing as heredity. The plan of creation is not dis- 
jointed; it moves along continuous lines; and let us, 
with our partial knowledge, doubt as much as we 
may, and hesitate to pronounce it good, it moves on 
unhesitatingly; and who are we to lift up our voices 
against the ways of the Eternal, before we have 
even begun to understand them ? 

"The imperfection is being worked out. Evil is 
self-destructive, but the beneficial results of experi- 
ence abide. We can hope with a confident hope 
even for those who through the abuse of their 
powers, or the misuse or neglect of them, have not 
gained what, through life's experience, they should 

[43] 



MANKIND 

have gained ; and have built for themselves a 
prison, instead of a temple opening on the infinite 
heavens. Surely these spirits in prison shall be 
visited by that Love which orbed itself into form in 
the Man Christ Jesus ; and through its power, gain 
strength and burst the prison doors, and walk out 
into the free, eternal Life of God." 

It is abundantly plain from the above extract 
that my friend did not agree with many of the ideas 
concerning the position, the responsibility, and the 
destiny of man which, at the time when he wrote 
(the reader will rememmber that these are his 
earlier notes, and were written many years ago), 
were almost universally accepted. He regarded the 
past history of the race without dismay, and he 
looked upon the future with unbounded hope. One 
or two further extracts from his manuscripts will 
perhaps show this more plainly. 

"You cannot" (I find this written upon the back 
of an envelope, the post-mark upon which has en- 
abled me to determine its date) — "by any rightful 
use of language, say that a child has 'fallen,' when, 
in the process of 'rounding to a separate mind,' it 
finds itself possessed of hitherto unsuspected de- 
sires, passions, and powers; and, in the endeavor 
to satisfy them, loses that innocence and simplicity 
which constitute the charm of childhood. The hu- 
man race at the present time is in the stage of ado- 
lescence, and exhibits a state of great confusion 
through the imperfect understanding of, and mas- 
tery over, its powers ; but it is a fatal error to con- 
sider this stage a lower one than that which preceded 
the recognition of the fact that it possessed these 

[44] 



MANKIND 

powers. It is a theory directly at variance with the 
facts of experience, to surmise that, but for 'the 
Fall' of our first parents, man would have been 
enabled to use these powers aright, without the aid 
of experience ; and it is absurdity to make the indi- 
vidual responsible for the inherited effects of this 
'fall,' before he even begins to understand, or to use 
as a free agent, the inharmonious constitution of 
which, in virtue of it, he finds himself possessed." 
And again, in one of his note-books — 
"I find myself possessed of certain tendencies 
which seem to be the results of the misuse of 
certain powers and instincts of my nature; not my 
misuse of them, but the over-indulgence of them, 
or disproportionate cultivation of them, by those 
who have formed previous links in the chain of 
existence of which I am the last. 

"If sin be defined as 'any departure from the 
due and proportionate use of faculties of which a 
being, having the power of choice, endowed with 
faculties of various orders, and sustaining corre- 
sponding relations to the Universe, may be guilty/ 
I am willing to admit that these tendencies I find 
within me are due to the 'sins' of my ancestors, of 
which I bear the penalty. But it is quite a sufficient 
penalty for me to bear, to have to start my exist- 
ence with these disadvantages, and work straight 
what has been made crooked, without charging on 
me the whole responsibility of having created these 
tendencies, and making me responsible for all im- 
perfections in my actions and life which may result 
from them. The result of every misuse of facul- 
ties works out its due effect in life, and has to be 

us] 



MANKIND 

borne (willingly or unwillingly) by some one. In 
the individual himself it results in an increased bias, 
and distortion of his nature; which is transmitted 
by the law of heredity to his descendants, and has 
to be righted by their painful endeavors, if it is 
righted at all. 

"In society it has to be righted by pain, injus- 
tice, sorrow, or evil of some kind, being vicariously 
borne (willingly or unwillingly) ; borne when it is 
not merited — when the person or persons who bear 
it are quite innocent of the faults which produce it. 

"This is the stern, unerring justice of the 
Universe, and there is no other. When sins, errors, 
mistakes and failures have worked out their full 
effects in life, what more can the sternest justice 
require. 

"In reality no more is required; it is >only 
foolish man who, in his ignorance, has imagined 
that Heaven is not satisfied therewith; foolish man, 
who has constructed for himself a monster, whom 
he has placed over the universe and labeled 'God;' 
foolish man, who, with his dim insight and unde- 
veloped faculties, has not yet been able to discern 
the glorious truth, that the heart of the Universe is 
not revenge,, or even justice merely, but boundless 
Love, which all the time bears us in its arms, and 
patiently ' strives to lif£ us into _ its own rapturous 
life — into the sweet consciousness of its loving 
embrace ;— patiently strives, but also patiently waits, 
knowing that the end is sure and the means per- 
fect; only seeming otherwise; to the objects of its 
tender care, because they are'' not yet able to com- 
prehend the purposes of boundless benevolence 

[46] 



MANKIND 

which are steadily marching to accomplishment 
through the seeming confusion, but, in reality, per- 
fect order of the Universe!" 

The following also is in keeping with the ideas 
expressed in the previous notes : — 

"Granting that man as a conditioned personality 
is finding out by experience how to adjust himself 
to his environment, and granting that he has accom- 
plished a partial adjustment, is it possible to admit 
that the individual in every case shares in the 
advantage which the race has thus gained? 

"I think it is. In spite of all the dark truths of 
heredity, there is a continuous elevation of the 
platform from which human life springs into exist- 
ence. Every advance of the race, consequent on 
appropriating the wisdom gained by experience, is 
shared in by all the individuals who compose it. In 
all cases they have a better start than if they began 
at the beginning. 

"This is the bright side of the truth of heredity. 
We inherit the beneficent results of experience, as 
well as the evil ones; and the start which any 
individual makes, at any period of the world's 
history, in consequence of inheriting both these, is 
a better one, I feel certain (however much he may 
be handicapped by bad inherited traits), than the 
one he would make if he were launched innocent, 
but inexperienced, into life. That is to say, the 
accumulated experience in the use of his powers, 
which any man inherits, more than counterbalances 
(even in the worst cases) the disadvantages under 
which he labors owing to the possession of a 

[47] 



MANKIND 

warped constitution, the result of the vices and mis- 
takes of his projenitors. 

"And the difficulties he experiences, and the 
pains and woes he has to endure before he can 
right the inherited bias of his nature, are not so 
great as the difficulties, pains, and woes he would 
have encountered in arriving at the experience 
from which now he starts. 

"Thus the world's pangs are not in vain. An 
'increasing purpose' runs through the ages; and 
every dearly bought experience is worth the 
price paid for it, and blesses all the future of 
humanity. 

"But after all, these are simply speculations ; and 
I do not see that much good can come from specu- 
lating concerning what might have been, or in haz- 
arding conjectures about things which we do not 
know, and are not likely to know — at least just yet. 
The ways of the Eternal need no vindication, and 
if they did, we have not the knowledge or the power 
wherewith to vindicate them. I fully believe that 
the facts of human life, as we see them around us, 
and as we find them in history, all point to develop- 
ment as a fundamental peculiarity of the system of 
things in which we find ourselves, and of which we 
form a part — a development which, with regard to 
man, holds good for the whole of his environment; 
and can be traced in his relations with the world 
of mind and the world of spirit, no less than in his 
relations with the material world. But seeing that 
we know so little as yet concerning the previous 
stages of this development; and absolutely nothing 
with regard to how man became possessed of per- 

[48] 



MANKIND 

sonality, it is best, I think, simply to acknowledge 
our ignorance, and to content ourselves with a rec- 
ognition of such facts as can be clearly established. 
Let us leave the past and the future. We stand in 
the present; to live now is our sole concern. 

"We find ourselves in the links of a vast chain, 
which stretches, we know, far back into the past, 
and will be continued, we feel sure, on into the un- 
known future. What the first links were we do 
not know; what the last will be we can only dimly 
guess. 

"The theories to account for the first which 
previous generations have constructed will, in all 
probability, have to be largely modified, if not 
altogether rejected, as the world's experience 
widens, and she learns better to read the open 
Book of Life; our guesses at the last must con- 
tinually be hazarded afresh, as humanity grows to 
manhood, and appropriates more and more of this 
infinite Universe which is his birthright. 

"But meanwhile we are, and the Universe is; 
here are two indubitable facts of infinitely more im- 
portance than any speculations concerning the past 
or the future. 

"We are afloat on the great ocean of existence, 
on whose bosom we find ourselves upborne by craft 
not of our own making, not of our own choosing 
— often far otherwise — bequeathed to us by those 
who before us have sailed across the unknown sea. 
To wreck them is madness, to refuse to steer them 
is folly, to waste time in regretting their imperfect 
construction is vain. Let us take the helm as best 
we may, set the imperfect sails, stop the leaks, pump 

[49] 



MANKIND 

out the bilge, and then, by careful steering and the 
help of such charts as have been left us by previous 
voyagers, and such cries of warning and encourage- 
ment as those who sail with us may send to us 
across the waters, do our best to reach the unknown 
land ahead. 

"We can do no more. The rest we must leave 
in the hands of Him who launched us on the sea, 
and who waits to receive us on the further shore; 
of whom, indeed, many and contradictory records 
have been left by those who went before, but none 
confirming so completely our dearest wishes and 
fondest hopes, none meeting so adequately our 
deepest needs, none telling so convincingly of suc- 
cessful voyages — of storms so bravely weathered, 
and dangers so triumphantly overcome, of such 
calm seas, moreover, and such glorious skies — as 
those which confidently assert that He is Good." 

The above extracts will give the reader some 
idea of the drift of my friend's thoughts with regard 
to the human race, and the position of the indi- 
vidual in it. He will find many developments and 
unfoldings of them in the succeeding chapters, and, 
therefore, I have not thought it worth while to do 
more in this one than to give such as show the 
direction in which his thinking tended. 

One or two further notes, in which are expressed 
his views regarding the rise of the scientific spirit, 
and possible development along her lines, will, 
however, form a not unfitting close to the chapter. 

"The fact that it was not till the last hundred 
years or so that men set themselves seriously and 
soberly to study Nature as she presents herself to 

[So] 



MANKIND 

them, is a strange — at first sight, a startling — one, 
and must have important meanings Before that, 
men fed their minds with imaginations, and con- 
ceived of the most fantastic travesties of Nature, 
the Universe, and Life, never dreaming of quietly 
setting to work to read them as they are. 

"Endeavor to realize the importance of this fact. 

"Man has been on this planet for thousands of 
years, and only within the last hundred years or so 
has he seriously devoted his powers to the study of 
its phenomena. 

"Before that (with a few brilliant exceptions), 
most of the intellectual power of the race was 
misdirected, occupied on unprofitable mental prob- 
lems, in the endeavor to work out the details of 
unverified preconceptions, and in logomachy. 

"What can this mean but that the scale on 
which humanity has been framed is much vaster 
than has hitherto been imagined; that the human 
race, far from having passed its meridian, has hardly 
yet shaken itself free from the mists of dawn? 

"It also lends increasing probability to the 
hypothesis, which, on many other grounds, seems 
to be a reasonable one, that man's spiritual nature 
is as yet almost wholly undeveloped, and at present 
is, relatively, in the same position with regard to 
its environment, as that in which the mind was 
before the rise of the scientific spirit. 

"The spiritual faculties of men are undoubtedly 
the highest which he possesses; they are the latest 
to develop; and we know that, in the case of indi- 
viduals, they take incalculably the longest time to 
train and get into full action. It is exceedingly 

[51] 



MANKIND 

probable that what is true of the individual is true 
also of the race — that the full development of these 
faculties has yet to take place, and that the full 
control which they should exercise over human life 
has yet to be won. 

"At present, certainly, they seem to cause man 
incalculably more pain and unrest than joy and 
delight — a state of things which is only possible 
when the right use of faculties is not understood, 
and the correspondence between them and their 
environment is incomplete. 

"They have not yet settled down to their proper 
work; man's being has not yet been harmonized 
and reduced to order by allowing these their proper 
place and influence; and the life which through 
these he can gain has not yet been gained. What 
new meanings the Universe will display to him 
when these are fully developed and rightly used, 
we can hardly dream of now, though the life 
of Jesus Christ may afford us some hints." 

I find in another place a somewhat similar 
thought. 

"What a tremendous waste of mental energy 
there has been in the world (waste, that is, in so 
far as it was productive of any objective good ; the 
subjective good it is impossible to estimate), owing 
to men directing their attention to pursuits (such 
as astrology, the search for the philosopher's 
stone, etc.) whose importance was imaginary, 
founded on baseless fancies, not real! 

"Their premises were wrong; they were not fixed 
in reality, but in the dreams of the imagination, and 
consequently all their deductions were worthless. 

[52] 



MANKIND 

"It may be that the mind was in training all this 
time, strengthening itself for the task of success- 
fully grappling with and co-ordinating the facts of 
the Universe. If so, the apprenticeship was a long 
one, and we should be prepared for great results 
when it is over, and the mind settles down to the 
study of realities. 

"If I read the history of the last hundred years 
aright, it means that this is what the mind has begun 
to do. The rise of the scientific spirit seems to me 
to mean that the mind has got out of its apprentice- 
ship, and is settling down to its real work, and will 
never again in the future misdirect its powers as it 
has done in the past. 

"What the result will be of any considerable 
number of the race using the mind aright to discern 
truth and master the secrets of Nature, the history 
of Science since its dawn hints at. But only hints 
at. There is no end to the mastery which the mind 
may gain over Nature; there is no end to Truth. 
This is what makes the history of the nineteenth 
century so unique, so pregnant with meaning. A 
new era has dawned; already the results have 
been marvellous. Of what they are the promise 
and the potency, who can tell?" 

And again — 

"We are, I believe, at the dawn of a new era. 
The mind has set itself to the task of reading the 
physical world, and has discerned simplicity, order, 
and law behind the complexity and the seeming con- 
fusion and disorder which appear to the senses. It 
seems, indeed, almost to have arrived at the most 
ultimate generalizations of which it is capable. It 

[S3] 



MANKIND 

has found that all phenomena are manifestations of 
an unknown Power, and has discovered that these 
manifestations, though apparently infinitely various, 
are reducible to simplicity under a few universal 
laws. Further than that it declares it cannot go. 
It acknowledges that it is entirely ignorant of the 
nature of this Power; it even declares that it is im- 
impossible to know It. And it is right — that is to 
say, it is impossible for Science to know the Uni- 
verse as anything else but Power. But human na- 
ture is endowed with other faculties besides mind, 
and the Universe presents other phenomena than 
merely physical ones, or, I should say, is more than 
phenomenal. There are moral and spiritual powers 
in man, and moral and spiritual facts in the Uni- 
verse. These powers man has never hitherto (with 
a few exceptions), to any considerable extent, culti- 
vated, nor scientifically applied to the solution of 
the problems which offer themselves in the Universe 
as we find it. 

"When they, in alliance with the mental faculties, 
are brought to bear on Truth, I do not despair of 
humanity finding that there is order, and law, and 
rightness behind the (phenomenal) confusion of the 
moral world; that it seems to us confused and 
wrong because we only see it as it seems, not as it 
is; that it is the varied manifestations of a Moral 
Power regulated by universal moral laws. Nay, 
further, I do not despair of humanity's discerning 
that this Moral Power is the same as that which the 
mind has discovered to be Physical Power, or 
Force; it only appearing double to man's twofold 
powers ; and I even dare to hope that all phenomena 

[54] 



MANKIND 

of the Universe, of which man with all the varied 
powers of his nature can take cognizance, may be 
resolved into, and may be known to be } the mani- 
festations of an all-embracing spiritual unity — Love. 

"Then will Nature be seen full of new meanings, 
and life will be a perfect joy. Then will be seen 
that it was not the Universe which was wrong and 
confused, but we who were blind and wilful. Then 
nothing will prevent us from reading infinite per- 
fection in every line and every thought which it 
contains. Every smallest flower, every tiniest 
insect, every drop of water and grain of sand, shall 
be seen to be the manifestation of that Spiritual 
Fact; every sternest law and darkest evil shall 
resolve itself into the same; the whole Universe 
shall be seen to be good, a perfect poem, a perfect 
symphony, vibrating ever to one key-note — the key- 
note of Love." 

Thus did my friend regard the present, and 
thus did he look forward to the future. And view- 
ing the world and man thus, it seems no longer 
surprising that he could write — 

"Who are we, that we should be in such a hurry 
to arrive at the consummation for which our hearts 
long — the 'divine event' to which creation is surely, 
with unwavering steps, progressing? 

"To march with patience in line with that steady 
advance is our duty now and here ; and because our 
duty, therefore the best for us. 

"In other ages, when we have attained to other 
things, our lives, and the life of creation around us, 
may move with a calmer, a less turbulent and chaotic 
flow than now, or we may attain to the revelation 

[55] 



MANKIND 

that the chaos is in us — is seeming, and not real. 
But surely now, this and no other is best for us; 
best, at any rate, if we steadfastly steer our course 
by those (as yet) weak but still undoubtedly most 
godlike promptings and aspirations which we find 
within us ; to strengthen and develop which is 
assuredly man's one task amid these shows and de- 
lusions of time." 



[56] 



CHAPTER III 



LIFE 



" 'Life is the correspondence of faculties with en- 
vironment,' says our latest philosophy. Yes, but 
what faculties and with zvhat environment? Are 
the faculties all of the same order, or are there 
different ranks of them? Do they 'correspond' 
simply with the visible? or are there some capable 
of correspondence with the Invisible Universe? 
Are they all capable of the same fulness of Life? 
or do their capacities or potentialities vary? Are 
all men equally conscious of possessing them? or 
do some of them lie dormant in some natures, ren- 
dering possible unknown and unsuspected develop- 
ments ? 

"All these questions require to be carefully con- 
sidered by any one who would attempt an explica- 
tion of Life on the basis of the above scientific 
definition; and in order to answer them, appeal 
must be made, not only to the consciousness of 
the individual, but also to the consciousness of the 
race. It must be ascertained not only what facul- 
ties we are conscious of, and with what environment 
we correspond, but also whether the consciousness 
of any of our fellow-men has ever transcended our 
own — whether they have corresponded with any 
environment which we have never known. 



[57] 



LIFE 

"A scientific examination of Life from this point 
of view has not yet been attempted ; but it will have 
to be investigated in this light before any reconcili- 
ation can be accomplished between the new Truth 
which the present age has discovered, and the old 
Truth which has been in the possession of the world 
for centuries. 

"And let not those who cling to the old truths 
cling too tenaciously to the forms which enshrine 
them. Let them not fear that in surrendering the 
forms, and clothing them in new ones which better 
suit the requirements of modern thought, they are 
in any danger of losing the truths themselves. 

"Truth can always take care of herself; she is 
not particular about the clothes she wears. If they 
do not adequately drape her, so much the worse 
for the clothes. Their insufficiency will soon 
become manifest, and men, who never allow Truth 
to go long undraped, will consign them to the rag- 
shop, and deck her out anew in a more fitting 
garb." 

The above extract strikes the key-note of all 
my friend's thinking on the subject of Life, and 
will enable the reader to understand the drift of 
his thought, not only in this chapter, but also in 
the subsequent ones. 

Accepting the definition of Life above quoted, 
as the terminus a quo of his investigation, he 
endeavored, by a careful consideration of the ques- 
tions he here propounds, to ascertain the ad quern. 

The reader will have ample opportunities of 
acquainting himself with his maturest conclusions 
on the subject before he closes the book. Mean- 

[58] 



LIFE 

while, in accordance with my plan, I will give first 
such extracts from the manuscripts as seem best 
to express the earlier stages of the development 
of his thinking. 

"True Life needs no justification: it justifies 
itself by the delight which ever accompanies it. 

"If the experience of any individual does not 
endorse this truth, it must be owing to' the failure 
of such a one to understand, and get into harmony 
with, the conditions of his existence; not to any- 
thing wrong in those conditions, nor to any 
inherent inability on his part (I mean any insuper- 
able, unalterable inability), either from excess or 
defect of functions, to adjust himself to those con- 
ditions, and to correspond with his environment. 
I cannot conceive of Life being created without 
there being the means of satisfying its require- 
ments. I cannot think it possible for the Universe 
to beget functions in living beings for which there 
is no corresponding environment. Even granting 
that this is possible, those functions for which no 
permanent satisfaction existed would soon perish for 
want of support, and only such would remain as the 
Universe contained adequate means of satisfying. 

"But though I cannot conceive of functions 
existing without a sphere in which they can sup- 
port and satisfy themselves, I can conceive of an 
organism possessing fuctions which have not yet 
been fully developed, and which have not yet 
entered into full correspondence with their proper 
sphere, — an organism which consequently does not 
possess that fulness of life which is possible to it. 

"Man at present seems to me to be in this con- 

[59] 



LIFE 

dition, and consequently to be in a state of unrest 
and dissatisfaction, — a state in which he must con- 
tinue until he has either brought all his faculties 
into full correspondence with their proper envir- 
onment (or, at least, has effected a satisfactory 
correspondence between those faculties of his which 
are most fundamental, and the environment of 
which, in virtue of the possession of these, he is 
conscious) ; or, by long disuse, has permitted some 
to shrivel up, and his life to become adjusted to 
such environment as he, with the faculties he con- 
tinues to exercise, can correspond with. In this 
case he will become dead to all such environment 
as his disused faculties could make him acquainted 
with; and if it possible to kill faculties by disuse, 
he will, of course, by this means contract the range 
of his being; and, if they are his nobler faculties 
which he thus kills by disuse, sink permanently in 
the scale of existence. 

"I do not think that experience gives us a clear 
and decided answer to the question as to whether 
this is possible in the case of man's higher faculties. 
I am inclined to think that it is not. Man seems 
to have almost boundless power to misuse his 
faculties; but there is no clear indication that, by 
the persistent neglect to use them, the possibilities 
of life which are his birthright can be permanently 
reduced. 

"Temporarily, no doubt, they can be; but there 
always remain warnings and indications that he 
has not fulfilled his possibilities, and I do not see 
any sure indication that the power of self-annihila- 
tion (either by the misuse or the neglect of his 

[60] 



LIFE 

faculties) has been placed within man's reach. The 
limits of freedom are arrived at long before that 
becomes possible. 

"No wilfulness can for ever deprive of us of all 
life, though it may long detain us from entering 
into the full possession of it. 

"That even this is possible is only owing to the 
height in the scale of existence at which we have 
been placed — the fulness of life to which we can 
attain. 

"For we have personality, i. e. self-consciousness, 
and freedom, and by how much the possession of 
these places us higher in the scale of being than 
the organisms which do not possess them, or only 
that shadow of them which we find among the 
lower animals, by that much is the joy and delight 
in living (i.e. in willingly adjusting our faculties 
to, and consciously corresponding with, our en- 
vironment) superior to the joy and delight of an 
unconscious and instinctive adjustment and cor- 
respondence; to say nothing of the fact that the 
possession of these peculiarly human characteristics 
makes us conscious of a new environment, by cor- 
respondence with which new and immeasurable 
heights of life can be gained. 

"But whenever, and to the extent to which, a 
conscious and willing correspondence is possible, 
then and to that extent must a conscious and willing 
departure from it, and neglect of it, be possible 
also. Only, as I have said, I cannot see any indi- 
cation that the possibilities in this direction extend 
to the power to kill faculties by disuse, and perman- 
ently contract the range of the organism. The 

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LIFE 

greatest deadness of our faculties to environment, 
however much it may lower us to the level of the 
brutes, can never destroy the possibilities of man- 
hood within us At least we believe not, and there- 
fore continue to hope even for the most degraded 
of mankind; we hardly know enough about life 
to know. 

"More especially does it seem impossible for us 
to deaden ourselves altogether to that environment 
with which we become acquainted through the 
possession of those distinctive characteristics of 
humanity which I have just mentioned — self-con- 
sciousness and self-determination. It is in virtue 
of these that we recognize the existence of the 
Great Personality — recognize that the Universe can 
sustain relations with us, such as we are only 
conscious of in our relations with one another, not 
with material things. The universal prevalence 
of religion shows that man has never altogether 
lost touch with this environment, though the very 
various relations which he has sustained to it, and 
the various feelings with which he has regarded 
it (ranging from fear and hate to trust and love), 
show what infinite degrees of life are possible to 
him with regard to that environment, and show 
also what woe or bliss may accompany them. 

"The question of life, indeed, for man, resolves 
itself into a question of the relations he sustains 
to this environment, — to the Central Life of the 
Universe. His personality can only find a fitting 
environment in a Personality; all questions as to 
the correspondence of the conditions which limit 
his personality (i. e. his constitution, physical and 

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LIFE 

mental) with the Universe, as it appears to him 
thus conditioned, being of secondary importance 
to the question: What attitude he should adopt to 
the Personality of which his own personality makes 
him conscious? For all minor correspondences 
must adjust themselves satisfactorily, if the great 
correspondence of personality with Personality is 
rightly established; the harmonizing influence of 
this central correspondence will then make itself 
felt through all the relations which his personality, 
owing to the peculiarities of his conditioning, may 
sustain to the Universe. Hence, to find out what, 
the Personal Characteristics of the Universe are, 
and the laws of its relations to other personalities, 
must ever be for man the question of questions; 
for these are fundamental, these are eternal; and 
boundless, endless Life — Life which can never fail, 
with its unfailing accompaniments of joy and 
delight, must ever result from man's correspond- 
ence with this Eternal Environment." 

The following develops in somewhat less ab- 
stract form the ideas contained in the above : — 

"There are three orders or planes of existence 
within our reach, with all three of which it has been 
ordained that we shall have relations. 

"The quality of our life depends upon our choice 
of these. Live m them all three we must, but it 
rests with ourselves which of them we live for. 
They are — the Sense Order, the Mind Order, and 
the Spirit Order. 

"The first of these is the order or plane, in which 
we find ourselves when we are first launched into 
existence. It is the only environment of which we 

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LIFE 

are at first conscious, and our whole attention is 
occupied in receiving, and adjusting ourselves to, 
the impressions which through our senses it con- 
veys to us. 

"This is the lowest order, and if our develop- 
ment is normal, it speedily fails entirely to satisfy 
us, owing to the rise within us of faculties of a 
different order, which are not content simply to 
receive impressions and observe phenomena, but 
crave to understand their meaning. Nevertheless, 
such infinite variety, and such opportunities of 
gaining pleasure, does the Sense Order present, 
that the majority of men continue to live in it 
and for it, even when higher faculties than those 
which are properly satisfied by it arise within them. 
They never get beyond the delusions of the senses; 
they think that the Sense Order contains sufficient 
wealth to permanently satisfy them. They do not 
seek to understand it; they simply seek to sate 
themselves with the pleasure which correspondence 
with it affords. For this purpose they too fre- 
quently prostitute their higher powers, — not using 
them legitimately, in order to master the Sense 
Order, and read it as the manifestations of Mind, 
but in order to multiply and intensify the delights 
which it ministers to the senses. For a time this 
succeeds, but only for a time. It is impossible for 
these higher faculties permanently to satisfy them- 
selves in this way, and it is impossible for the 
senses long to respond to such illegitimate demands 
upon their powers If strained beyond a certain 
point, they refuse to yield any pleasure at all, and 
even when this extreme point is not reached, a 

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LIFE 

sense of unrest and dissatisfaction must continually 
accompany the attempt to satisfy with one environ- 
ment a being endowed with faculties framed to 
correspond with more than one. 

"The Mind Order ranks next to the Sense 
Order. It is the plane of existence which lies 
halfway between the Sense Order and the Spirit 
Order. 

"The man who lives in it and for it sees that 
the Sense Order is not real. He sees that it is only 
the temporary form of Something which is not it, 
but which takes this form to that part of his 
constitution which requires an environment of this 
kind. But what that Something is, the man who 
has advanced no further than the Mind Order can 
never know. He can define it no further than as 
Power or Force; he can know about it, but he 
cannot know It. 

"He is this much better off than the man who 
is living for the Sense Order, in that he looks upon 
this whirl of things which we call the Material 
World, and knows that it is a drama, though the 
interpretation thereof he cannot discover; whereas 
the man living for the Sense Order believes that 
the play is real. The watching of the play, and 
the using of his powers to trace the simple means 
by which such an infinite variety of effects is pro- 
duced, may long seem to him sufficient to afford 
him permanent and satisfying delight. But he is 
bound to find out, sooner or later, that his whole 
being cannot be satisfied in this way; that there 
is another order with which he can have relations; 
and that no lasting satisfaction can be gained till 

[65] 



LIFE 

his relations with this order are properly es- 
tablished. I do not say that he always finds this 
out in the short span of life which he lives here. 
Often he seems to have but a very feeble con- 
sciousness of this highest environment; and often 
he rests contented with a very imperfect corre- 
spondence with it. But he is bound, sooner or 
later, to find out that he cannot gain full satisfac- 
tion for every part of his nature unless he enters into 
correspondence with this environment; nay, that 
such a correspondence is of primary importance, 
and that, till it is made, all the satisfaction which 
he derives from the correspondence of the other 
parts of his nature with their fit environment, will 
be poisoned by a continuous sense of dissatisfac- 
tion and unrest. 

"This third order, or plane of existence, is the 
Spirit Order. From the standpoint of this order, 
a man can not only see the play of life, but read 
it. Entering this order, he enters on the Real — 
he comes face to face with Eternal Things. Then 
he no longer knows about, but he lives in realities. 
Between this and the Mind Order there is all the 
difference which there is between the knowledge 
and experience of a man who has visited foreign 
lands, and seen them for himself, and established 
relations with them, and the man who has only 
heard about them. The meaning of the play, of 
life, of Nature, is plain to him; or rather some 
of the meanings; for there are infinite meanings 
which only eternity can exhaust. He sees Truth. 
The Eternal Reality orbs itself continually vaster, 
out of all the flux of things; and linking himself 

[66] 



LIFE 

into harmony with it, he lives more and more the 
Eternal Life, which the accidents of time cannot 
harm nor diminish. 

"The Spirit Order can only become a reality 
to us when we exercise that part of our nature 
which is fitted to correspond with it — exercise 
it in accordance with the laws which eternally 
and unalterably express the relations which we 
and it can mutually sustain. 

"Man has had a by no means indistinct or im- 
perfect knowledge of these laws, even from the 
earliest times, and they are now all summed up 
and unified in the Christian law of Love. 

"Though known, however, they are not, by the 
majority of men, obeyed; and the world as yet 
knows little of the life of correspondence with the 
Spirit Order, — of its supreme worth and satisfying 
sweetness. 

"The consequences of living in one or other of 
these three orders — that is to say, of making choice 
of one or the other, 'setting our affections' on it, 
(for, as I have said, we are bound by our consti- 
tution to have relations with all three) — follow 
naturally on the nature of each. 

"Living for the senses, a man gets what pleasure 
and enjoyment the senses can give; but he inevi- 
tably finds, sooner or later, that this is only 
limited, and 'wears with time,' and cannot satisfy 
the Infinite within him. It is the Infinite trying 
to satisfy itself with the finite,* and the result is 

*The reader will doubtless remember a very similar 
statement of Teufelsdroekh: "Man's unhappiness, as I 
construe, comes of his greatness; it is because there is an 

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LIFE 

certain. The poor overworked body speedily 
refuses to respond to the demands which the spirit 
makes upon it; and the hungry spirit looks 
eagerly round for new sensations with which to 
ward off satiety. That is the reason why lust in 
extreme cases merges into cruelty; it is the last 
effort of man's spirit to satisfy itself with the 
finite. 

"The pleasures to be derived from the intel- 
lect are greater far, and less gross than those to 
be derived from the senses, nor are they so easily 
exhausted ; but here again the spectacle is presented 
of man's spirit trying to satisfy itself with what 
cannot satisfy it, and the inevitable results sooner 
or later appear — dissatisfaction and satiety. The 
intellect soon dashes itself against the iron walls 
which enclose it; it cries for answers to questions 
to which, for it, no answers are possible. Not all 
the accumulated stores of wisdom and knowledge 
which the world holds, and all the as yet unex- 
hausted truths of Nature and Life which the mind 
can grasp, can satisfy the spirit's cravings, and give 
it rest and peace. 

"It is by entering the Spirit Order, and by 
setting its affections on it, that the spirit of man 
can alone gain the rest, and peace, and satisfaction 
for which it craves, and which it so vainly seeks 
to find in the Sense Order, or the Mind Order. It 
is in that direction alone that man's nature opens 
on the infinite, and can find room for that bound- 
Infinite in him, which with all his cunning he cannot quite 
bury under the finite." — "Sartor Resartus," p. 131 
(People's Edition). 

[68] 



LIFE 

less expansion which it desires. Truth, Holiness, 
and Love, the realities of the Spirit Order, are 
as infinite as man's capacity for them; and infinite 
is the satisfaction which they give the spirit that 
lives for them and in them. Thus to live is to 
live the true life, the Eternal Life, the Life of the 
Eternal and Infinite Spirit." 

To this I find appended the following note: — 
"The foregoing considerations suggest, among 
other things, the uselessness of any demonstrations 
of the supreme worth of the Spirit Order to those 
who are living in the other two, except by life. To 
convince them, you must live the Eternal Life. No 
demonstrations of the folly of living for the Sense 
Order are of any avail in inducing those who are 
living in and for it to live a higher life, unless 
you can make them discontented with their present 
life by showing that you have something well 
worth having, which they have not J a peace, a 
joy, a strength, a light, which they would fain 
possess, but which they know well their present 
life cannot give them. 

"No intellectual proofs will satisfy the man who 
is living for the Mind Order that the Spirit Order 
is a higher and worthier one, unless he sees that 
you have satisfaction where he has dissatisfaction, 
see light where he cannot pierce the darkness, 
and read Love where he only reads Law. 
The world can only be lifted into the Spirit Order 
by beholding, and being stimulated by the sight 
of, the fulness of Life which those who live in 
and for it possess; only thus can its supreme 
beauty and its infinite worth be brought home to 

[69] 



LIFE 

the world's heart with convincing power. What 
one man could do for the elevation of the race by 
living that life, the history of Christianity shows. 
Would that those who call themseleves by His 
Name more closely followed in His steps!" 

Very similar to the above is the following: — 

"The central and commanding point of the uni- 
verse — the point from which we can get a bird's-eye 
view of the whole, and see it in all its relations — 
is everywhere. We stand now at the centre; we 
have as many opportunities now of becoming 
acquainted with its deepest meanings as ever we 
shall have. 

"Not that the use we make of our present oppor- 
tunities will not enable us to enter into larger life, 
and so penetrate deeper into the truth of things; 
but what I mean is that the opportunity for doing 
this we now possess, and that only by making use 
of it can larger Life, with its consequent wider 
touch on that which environs us, be gained. 

"No change of place, no change of body, will 
be of any use to us, if in this place we do not make 
use of the opportunities it presents, and with this 
body do not use the power it places at our disposal 
of winning Life. 

"A man sees what he has the eyes to see; the 
quality of Life he possesses is exactly proportionate 
to the faculties which he exercises most; he lives in 
a world of his own making, for the Great All takes 
shape to him in forms which are constructed by his 
various faculties, and only mirrors Itself in such 
ways as these faculties possess the power to 
construct. 

[70] 



LIFE 

"But inasmuch as the material world is simply 
the transitory form which the spiritual takes, and 
all Reality is spiritual, the Spiritual Life is the 
highest, and the only true Life; and only the 
man who lives that Life can truly be said to live, 
because he has Life then of the same quality as 
the Central Life of the Universe — is 'one' with it, 
and possesses the key to all its infinite meanings. 
But it does not seem possible to lift men into this 
Life unless they are discontented with the quality 
of the life they at present possess. That discontent 
is bound to come sooner or later; for man, with 
the nature with which he has been endowed, 
cannot remain contented with anything less than 
the Spiritual Life, — that is to say, not permanently, 
though for a time he may. It would have been no 
use trying to persuade the Prodigal to return home 
again before his substance was wasted. There are 
many men in this condition. They are in such a 
state of contentment with the life they are living 
that they do not feel the need for anything better. 
As long as they remain thus it is useless to try and 
lift them up to higher Life; they must be left to 
their 'paddock' life,* till calamity, or pain, or death 
shakes them out of their contentment, and awakens 
them to the fact that they are poor, and blind, 
and naked in the universe." 

The following indicated his position from a more 
personal standpoint: — 

*An allusion, evidently, to Browning's lines — 
"Left in God's contempt apart, 
Tame in earth's paddock as her prize." 

[71] 



LIFE 

"I have within me not only animal require- 
ments, which crave for satisfaction, and find it in 
the material environment in which I am placed; 
not only mental functions, which find a fitting 
environment in the manifestations of Mind into 
which, by their means, all material phenomena are 
resolvable; but also a heart, with spiritual affec- 
tions and cravings which no amount of pleasure 
derived from the gratification of my physical or 
mental requirements can satisfy. I have found that 
there is an environment to match this part of my 
nature, as well as environments for the other 
parts. 

"I have found that That which works in and 
through the phenomena of the physical world, and 
of receptiveness which will alone allow it freely to 
behind its laws, and by their means meets the 
requirements of my physical and mental consti- 
tution, will make Itself felt no less satisfyingly to 
my spiritual nature, if I do but adopt that attitude 
communicate with my spirit. 

"I have found that it will reward a thousandfold 
all efforts to get into harmony with it. To estab- 
lish this harmony — to conform to the laws of this 
Spiritual Environment, and to correspond with it — 
I have found to be increasingly possible, and in- 
creasingly delightful : and my conviction has been 
continually confirmed that it possesses in boundless 
perfection the quality of Love, into which all its 
laws are resolvable, and by which all its manifes- 
tations in the universe are unswervingly regu- 
lated." 



LIFE 

And again — 

"Nothing surprises me more than the tre- 
mendous force with which our feeblest efforts in 
the direction of the Right and the True are supple- 
mented in Life, and made to produce results out of 
all proportion to our endeavors. Do but throw 
yourself into the flow of the great tide of the Uni- 
verse which is ever sweeping on to spiritual ends, 
and in spite of all mistakes, arising from an im- 
perfect knowledge and understanding of the great 
world in which we find ourselves; in spite of fre- 
quent misunderstanding of the beneficent pur- 
poses which the Eternal is working out for us, 
through us, and in us ; — in spite of all these, the 
man who keeps in his heart the determination to 
find out the Truth and to do the Right, will surely 
find himself swept by the beneficent forces of the 
Universe into heights of joy and peace too awful to 
be named in speech; he will find himself able to 
read the world and Life with the accuracy of clearest 
vision; he will find himself absolved from all care 
and anxiety about the future ; he will feel at rest — 
secure from all evil, and perfectly sure of all Good — 
in the Bosom of the Infinite Benevolence which 
surrounds him : — which he continually learns better 
to know, and more completely to trust, as, by all 
the experiences of time, he is wrapped more com- 
pletely in its strong embrace." 

It will be seen from the above extracts that my 
friend held, not only that a spiritual life — a "corre- 
spondence" with a "Spiritual Environment," a "life 
in a Spirit Order" — was possible, but that it is pos- 

[73] 



LIFE 

sible nozv. A few of his thoughts on this point may 
be fitly inserted here. 

He writes in one of his note-books — 

"Heaven in all its beauty, and hell in all its black- 
ness, are around us now ; there is no need to relegate 
them to the future. 

"Here and now there are infinite riches of 
Truth within our power to grasp; sweetest visions 
of Good to be seen; heavenliest raptures of joy and 
bliss to be enjoyed. Oh, the pity of it that most 
men so completely miss them ! 

"To the seeing eye earth is full of heaven — earth 
is heaven, flooded with all the glories of the Eternal 
Light. The pure and loving heart needs not the 
change of death to enable it to look on the face of 
the Eternal ; here and now does it stand in His pres- 
ence ; here and now is it thrilled with the sweet con- 
sciousness of His changeless Love. 

"To realize this truth is to begin to live — it is to 
enter upon that endless Life which the accidents of 
time cannot affect, and which death cannot change, 
because it is the Life of the changeless Eternal 
Spirit." 

And again — 

"There is no other heaven beyond that which, 
by a wise and right use of our powers, we can enter 
into now ; there is no other hell beyond that in which 
we find ourselves, when we have misused or neg- 
lected them. 

"I do not say that the change of death will 
make no difference — that it may not relieve the 
upward-soaring soul of some weights which have 
hindered its ascent, and may not make the soul that 

[74] 



LIFE 

has been grovelling amidst earthly things more con- 
scious of its debased condition; but it cannot give 
self-control to any spirit which has not won it on 
earth by noble strife; it cannot give eyes to any 
spirit wherewith to gaze on the Eternal Realities, if 
he has not in the present world used his powers of 
spiritual vision on the eternal things which are all 
around us now; it cannot make sensible to the 
touches of the Eternal Love any spirit which has 
not striven to get into tune with that key-note of 
love to which all Life and all creation is tuned. 

"Heaven is self-control, and Light, and Love; 
and no possible change of place or of body can give 
us self-control, if we have not won it; or Light, if 
we have preferred to sit in darkness ; or Love, if we 
have not cultivated that divinest instinct of our 
souls. 

"Wherever our spirits may drift out of this 
'ruined chrysalis'* of our bodies, of this we may 
be sure — that he who* is unrighteous will be un- 
righteous still, and he who is filthy will be filthy 
still, and he that is righteous and holy will be right- 
eous and holy still — gravitating to his own place 
(which in no case need we suppose is a fixed and 
final one), whether high or low, in obedience to 
those unalterable laws of spiritual attraction and 
repulsion which regulate, even in this world, the 
quality of the Life which men possess." 

And yet again — 

"How foolish for men to imagine that at some 
future time, and under changed conditions with 

*Cf. "In Memoriam," lxxxii. 

[75] 



LIFE 

regard to externals, they will be more favourably 
placed to gain life, and light, and joy, than they 
are at present; when these can only be attained to 
by internal changes, which are as possible, and as 
easy for us to effect, now as they ever will be! 
Here and now we have afforded us unnumbered 
opportunities for our spirits to grow and expand 
into larger and fuller life. Here and now there are 
innumerable lessons to be learned, enough to sat- 
isfy the most insatiable appetite for Truth ; heaven- 
liest visions of Life and Light to behold, if we will 
but look and see them. Such boundless opportu- 
nities does the present afford us of gaining all that 
is worth gaining; so completely does the Infinite 
Universe, with all its inexhaustible wealth, lie within 
our reach now, — that I cannot think of or imagine 
any place or condition more favourable. When we 
have satisfied ourselves with the beauty and splen- 
dour of the material world; when we have ex- 
hausted all its Truth and possessed ourselves of all 
its secrets; when we have fully learned all the les- 
sons of self-control, of patience, and of love which 
we can learn here and now, — then may we cry out 
for other worlds, and demand new ideals towards 
which to strive. But not only is this at present 
impossible and unimaginable, but it will ever be- 
come more and more so as the expanding soul con- 
tinually finds the present more full of inexhaustible 
Truth, and the place whereon it stands more fully 
bathed in the glories and vibrating with the pulses 
of the Life of the Eternal Spirit." 

And yet again — 

"Depend upon it that those who see no Divinity 

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LIFE 

in the present will see none in the future; that no 
new glories will burst on the eyes of him who is 
not finding the place whereon he now stands glori- 
ous. Men talk of the Eternal having appeared in 
distant lands to those who lived long ages ago ; they 
do not know that, if they had stood beside them 
then, they would have seen no more of His glory 
than they can see now, by lifting up their eyes, and 
opening out their hearts to receive the present indi- 
cations of His presence. 

"To Moses, a bush in the desert was all aflame 
with the splendour of the Eternal; to Peter Bell — 

'A primrose by the river's brim 
A yellow primrose was to him, 
And it was nothing more.' 

Yet the Eternal was in the primrose as much as in 
the bush; the difference was in the men. 

"A seer to-day will walk the earth as reverently 
as ever Moses did when, with unsandalled feet, he 
approached the burning bush, and will as plainly 
hear the voice of the Eternal speaking to his soul as 
he did three thousand years ago. 

"The poverty is not in our surroundings ; it is in 
ourselves. There are no deepest secrets of the Uni- 
verse, no clearest visions of Truth, no most satisfy- 
ing harmonies of Life and Love, which are not 
within our reach, even here and now. But poor, 
blind, foolish, wilful man will not grasp them as 
they lie before him in the present. He vainly looks 
forward to possessing, at some future time, and by 
some change of body or of locality, that which can 
only be possessed by change of soul. He vainly 

[77] 



LIFE 

imagines that the Eternal elsewhere will afford him 
— can afford him — better opportunities for living 
than are now within his reach; he vainly supposes 
that in some other portion of His Universe He is 
more present, more clearly to be seen, and more 
satisfying to be enjoyed, than here. 

"Man has within him now all power to rise to 
infinite, endless Life, but at present he does not use 
it; he has before him all the glories of the Eternal, 
but at present he does not see them. Thick veils 
of habit, of inherited ideas, of superstition and 
ignorance, hide them from him; strong fetters of 
uncontrolled or misused faculties, bind him down. 
Nevertheless, it still remains true that he possesses 
the power to rise to endless Life, and that he is 
surrounded by a Universe capable of supplying all 
his needs. This some men have known; this all 
men shall know. 

"Some men there have been to whom earth has 
not been the dull, commonplace, dreary abode it is 
to most, but the very temple of the Living God; to 
whom Life has not been a weariness and a prolonged 
endurance, but a jewel of infinite worth, the posses- 
sion of which inspires the soul with unfailing joy 
and delight. They have rent the veils which lay 
between their eyes and Truth; they have burst the 
bonds which have hindered them from soaring; 
they have pierced through the fleeting and transitory 
to the Changeless and Eternal. They have got 
themselves into tune with the pulsations of that 
Eternal Life, which for ever and ever endures, be- 
hind all the changes of its manifestations, in time- 
less, inexhaustible fulness; they have satisfied their 

[78] 



LIFE 

utmost needs with its riches of Life, and Truth, and 
Love. 

"What they have done — more especially what He 
has done, who saw to the very heart of the Uni- 
verse, and found it Love ; who fathomed the deepest 
depths of Life, and found them Joy ; who had such 
oneness with the Great All that He dared to call 
Himself the Son of God ; — what these have attained 
to, all may attain to. Yea, in spite of wilfulness 
and ignorance, all shall attain to this, piloted by the 
Great All-encircling Love, through doubt, and 
fear, and pain, and woe, and sin, up to the con- 
sciousness of its own infinite sweetness, up to the 
fulness of its own endless Life." 

It seems not inappropriate in this connection to 
insert a note which contains my friend's ideas with 
regard to the future life. 

"I think that in all probability the first feeling 
we shall experience after we have undergone the 
change which we call death will be surprise that 
the next world is so much like this one. I cannot 
believe that there will be any breach of continuity 
between this life and the next — that the mere cast- 
ing off of this envelope of flesh will enable us to 
see more than we have learned to see here. The 
Universe must appear to us in the next life grand 
or commonplace, vibrating with joy or filled with 
pain and sorrow — a temple of the Living Spirit 
or a charnel-house of the dead, according as we 
have learned to read it aright, or have abused and 
neglected the powers we possess of so reading it, 
in the present life. Depend upon it, we shall begin 
in the next world where we leave off in this. We 

[79] 



LIFE 

cannot be nearer the Eternal than we are now; we 
cannot have better opportunities than we now pos- 
sess of gaining Truth and entering into everlasting 
Life. 

"And even if at death we were ushered into the 
nearer presence of the Infinite Spirit, in some place 
more filled with His glory than this place, think you 
we should be conscious of it, when now we are un- 
conscious of a thousand indications of His Pres- 
ence, and only catch sight of a fraction of that 
glory by which we are ever surrounded? 

"And if, from these bodies of ours, our spirits 
passed into nobler frames, affording us a hundred 
times greater opportunities for corresponding with 
the Universe, and for mastering its secrets, think 
you they would benefit us, when we have not yet 
made full use of the powers we have, and conse- 
quently, should be bound either to neglect or mis- 
use larger ones? The capacities of an angel would 
be of no use to us, except in so far as we had the 
angel's power of using them. Ignorant of or un- 
skilled in their use, to us they would be no boon — 
much the reverse. 

"It is extremely probable, if not certain, that 
we actually carry about with us, and have in us 
now, that 'body which shall be,' and that death is 
simply the casting off of a worn-out husk, the shed- 
ding of which leaves us in all essentials as we were 
before, effecting no change either in us or in the 
appearance which the universe presents to us. The 
knowledge which we have gained of the cosmos 
and its laws seems to demand some such doctrine, 
to avoid the breach of continuity which would other- 

[go] 



LIFE 

wise take place. Be that as it may, it is certain 
that to all the great and fundamental relations which 
we can sustain to the Universe, the change of death 
can make no difference. It cannot give us faith, if 
we have not gained it here; it cannot enable us to 
read Truth, if we have not endeavoured to read it 
here; it cannot fill our spirits with the joys of Love, 
if we have not tried to tune our hearts here to that 
key-note which is just as surely the note to which 
life here is tuned as it is anywhere in the boundless 
realms of space." 

The reader will perceive, in the above extract, 
as well as in those which precede it, a tacit assump- 
tion that there is a future life. 

This was with my friend a fixed conviction. That 
the change of death was simply a change, and not 
an annihilation of existence, he most firmly be- 
lieved; in fact, he confesses that annihilation is in- 
conceivable to him. 

"Do you think it possible," he writes, "that the 
Eternal, having struck a soul into being, will ever 
be compelled to strike it out? I cannot believe so. 
He is not thus to be baulked in His purposes. I 
can imagine such a soul long existing in unrest and 
woe, through not having yet learned to live; but I 
cannot imagine the Eternal ever blotting it out of 
existence in despair of teaching it that lesson. The 
fact that, as far as -we know, we were not, and now 
are, is no proof or argument that we in the future 
may (or shall) cease to be. We are now, and be- 
lieving that the Power which brought us into exist- 
ence is a good Power, and has created us for some 
good end, I cannot think it possible that He will be 

[81] 



LIFE 

compelled to withdraw from existence one single 
soul which He has launched into it, or fail at last to 
lead it up to that eternal blessedness for which He 
has designed it. We are, and therefore we must 
be. The question is not whether we shall ever 
cease to be, but how long we shall remain blind to 
what true Life really is — how long we shall con- 
tinue to miss its joy, and fall short of its fulness. 

"That men may long continue in the outer dark- 
ness, existing rather than living, seems certain; we 
see so many instances of it here, that we cannot 
doubt that. But that the Eternal will ever be 
obliged to say of any soul, 'This work of Mine is a 
failure ; wishing it all good, it has yet succeeded in 
making itself utterly evil; I despair of redeeming 
it; let it cease to be;' — that I can never believe." 

In the last extract the reader will have observed 
that my friend draws a distinction between existence 
and life. 

I insert here a note from one of his note-books 
which embodies his thought on this point. 

"There is a vast difference between existence and 
life ; exist we must, but it may be a long time before 
we begin to live. Existence we share in common 
with the brute creation, but the possibility of attain- 
ing to life is peculiar to humanity. 

"This is owing to the fact that man alone pos- 
sesses the power of consciously directing and con- 
trolling the faculties and instincts of his nature, 
and does not merely exercise them instinctively and 
automatically. He possesses the power to possess 
himself; which includes, not only the power to use 
as a free agent the capacities of body and mind by 

[82] 



LIFE 

means of which he holds relations with the material 
universe, but also the limitless power of correspond- 
ence with that Spiritual Environment with which 
his personality makes him acquainted. 

"But the possession of this power brings with 
it the consciousness of responsibility for the use he 
makes of it. For it makes him conscious of a 
Power in the universe of a similar kind to that 
which he possesses — a Power energizing in definite 
and constant ways, and requiring him to exert his 
power in similar ways. He is, I believe, directly 
conscious of this Power; the universal prevalence 
of moral distinctions — of conscience with its un- 
swerving testimony to the Tightness or wror.gncs 
of actions or motives — cannot be satisfactorily ac- 
counted for on any other hypothesis. But we have 
ample evidence that he has been only gradually 
arriving at true knowledge concerning its modes of 
action. I do not enter now into the question how 
this knowledge has been gained: — how far con- 
science is the product of experience; and how far 
the degree of enlightenment to which man has 
attained in moral distinctions is due to other causes. 

"Whatever may be the truth in this respect, I 
think we may state it as a fact, universally acknowl- 
edged, to a greater or less extent, by the whole 
human race, that it is only in definite modes that 
man can rightly exercise this power of self-determi- 
nation which he possesses. There is a definite order 
in the Universe to which he must adjust himself, if 
he would avoid conflict with it. 

"This being so, we may define Life (as contrasted 
with existence) to be, the free and full exercise of 

[83] 



LIFE 

all man's faculties and powers in harmony with the 
consciously recognized modes to which the Universe 
conforms (using the word 'Universe' in the widest 
sense, to include the Power of which man, in virtue 
of the possession of personality, is conscious). 

"Life in this perfect fulness no man possesses; 
but still there is a vast difference between even the 
most imperfect recognition of this as the end to be 
aimed at, and the most distant approximation to it; 
and the life which does not recognize such an end at 
all ; which makes no attempt at self-possession and 
self-determination in harmony with the flow of the 
Universe, but simply exists in the instincts, habits, 
and prepossessions which heredity has entailed on 
it, or into which it has drifted by the joint opera- 
tion of external circumstances and unregulated 
volitions. 

"This latter kind of life is what I mean by exist- 
ence. It is without that conscious power over itself, 
the possession of which constitutes one of the pecul- 
iar glories of humanity ; it is without that conscious 
conformity to the modes in which the Universe 
works to which man alone is permitted to attain. 
It never really possesses itself ; it never lifts its head 
above the crowd of instincts, and conceptions, and 
peculiarities of constitution, in which it is immersed ; 
it is influenced in all its actions by motives suggested 
by the unregulated play of its powers ; it acts on the 
impulses of uncontrolled and unbalanced faculties, 
and is driven by them, instead of guiding them in 
the strength of conscious power over them. 

"There is, however, an intermediate state be- 
tween the state of existence and that of life, and it 

[84] 



LIFE 

is in that intermediate state that we at present find 
the majority of men. For men inherit, along with 
other peculiarities of constitution, a more or less 
clear intimation of the ways in which they ought to 
act — the result of the previous experience of the 
race with regard to the modes in which the Universe 
acts,* embodied in conscience; and they also receive 
in their early years further impressions of this na- 
ture from those with whom they come in contact, 
amounting, as a rule (though to this there are many 
exceptions), to the general idea of the age concern- 
ing the right and proper way in which to act, in 
consequence of what the Universe is conceived to 
be. In other words, men inherit and get implanted 
in them in their early years certain ideas with regard 
to morality ; what they gain in the latter way, speak- 
ing broadly, being the ideas of the age in which 
they live, the former being the ideal of action pro- 
duced by the previous knowledge and experience of 
the race (or that portion of it which constituted 
their ancestry) concerning the nature and character 
of the Eternal. There are not a few men who 
speedily shake themselves free from the restraints 
imposed by their inherited ideas concerning the 
ways in which they ought to act, and surrender 
themselves to the sway of their desires and lusts. 
And there are others who rise from an unintelligent 
obedience to these ideas, to an intelligent recogni- 
tion of them as a more or less imperfect embodi- 
ment of the eternal truths of the Universe, and to a 
willing obedience to them as the right and proper 

* See chapter on "Religion," page 151. 

[85] 



LIFE 

rules of Life. But I believe that there are none who 
are wholly destitute of these moral ideas, and who 
do not feel them at first to be binding upon them. 
These ideas may vary very considerably in char- 
acter and strength (contrast them, for instance, in 
children brought up in the slums of our great cities), 
and they may be either disregarded, or intelligently 
apprehended; but in all cases they are present to 
some extent — an inseparable portion of that consti- 
tution of which we find ourselves possessed when 
we wake to consciousness. 

"The great majority of men, however, neither 
shake themselves free from the restraints which 
these inherited and derived moral ideas impose, nor 
rise to an intelligent apprehension of them. They 
simply accept them, and endeavour with more or 
less earnestness to conform to them. Hence, 
though this can still be only called existence, it is a 
higher kind of existence than that of the man whose 
nature is entirely unregulated; — that condition in 
which the nature is a chaos, swayed hither and 
thither by passions, and desires, and feelings wholly 
uncontrolled by the will, and owning no law but 
desire. For this kind of existence is to a certain 
extent controlled; it does in some measure conform 
to the true laws of Life ; it does use its powers to a 
certain extent as it should, i. e. in accordance with 
the modes in which the Universe acts 

"But still it is only existence, and the man who 
has it cannot be said to live; for the use he makes 
of his powers is simply instinctive, not intelligent. 
He uses them in this way because he has inherited 
a bias to use them thus, not because he recognizes 

[86] 



LIFE 

that this is the right way to use them, in virtue of 
what the Universe is. 

"Whatever the bias may be, he conforms to it 
with equal readiness (compare the actions of an 
ordinary moral Englishman with those of a moral 
Hindu), and with equally strong convictions that 
that, and that only, is the right course of action. 

"He never makes the appeal to Truth, never tries 
to verify his ideas by comparing them with Reality, 
never gets consciously in tune with the Universe, 
but only laboriously tries to conform to what he has 
been told that it is. Hence this kind of life is regu- 
lated by no great principles. There are rules in 
abundance, but they are arbitrary, and those who 
obey them do so blindly and unintelligently, because 
they form part of their moral stock-in-trade, not 
because they are alive to those fundamental rela- 
tionships of which they are the expression. 

"Indeed, for the most part, those rules of con- 
duct, which are accepted as binding by men in this 
condition, have a very large admixture of precepts 
which relate simply to human conventions — con- 
ventions, moreover, which, in very many cases, have 
lost their meaning and significance. They once 
gave expression to men's genuine conceptions con- 
cerning the fitting modes of action which should be 
adopted by them in order to please the Deity, but 
have long ceased to be associated with these, and are 
conformed to only owing to the weight of custom 
and precedent which attaches to them. 

"Though dead and meaningless, however, these 
rules still continue to be recognized as binding 
by those who regulate their conduct by the precepts 

[87] 



LIFE 

of an unverified inherited and acquired morality. 
For they have no power to distinguish between 
what is essential and what is non-essential, — be- 
tween what is an arbitrary mode of expressing a 
truth, and what is an eternal law of the Universe. 
They can only appeal to authority — either that ex- 
ternal one which speaks in the precepts of religion, 
and in the morality which is recognized by the age, 
or that internal one which gives expression to the 
moral ideas which heredity and early training have 
entailed on them. 

"But in both, what is essential and what non- 
essential — the rules which give expression to what 
are the eternally right and proper courses of 
action, and the rules which refer to conventions, 
i. e. to particular expressions of those which have 
at various times been adopted — are inextricably 
mingled, and the man who lives by rules has no 
power to distinguish between them. For he has 
no consciousness of being in true and vital relation- 
ship with the Universe ; he does not obey these rules 
of conduct because he knows and feels that they 
give expression to the eternal laws which govern 
these relations, in virtue of what he is and what the 
Universe is. He obeys them because he happens 
to find them in his conscience and in society, not 
because they are true. In this state do we find the 
great majority of men to be at present. 

"The rules they conform to vary considerably, 
even enormously, according to the country or the 
position in which they are situated. With these I 
am not at present concerned. I am simply pointing 
out now the blind and unintelligent character of the 

[88] 



LIFE 

obedience which they give to this inherited and ac- 
quired morality — the character of the obedience 
being always the same, whatever variations there 
may be in the character of the morality, or in the 
quantity of the obedience. Thus the pious Hindu 
conforms to the precepts of his religion, including 
all conventions relating to ablutions, sacrifices, etc., 
with just as firm — and just as blind and unintelli- 
gent — a conviction that he is doing the will and 
is pleasing in the sight of the Supreme Powers, as 
a moral Englishman conforms to the rules of mor- 
ality and the religious conventions (such as the 
attendance on public worship, and the way of spend- 
ing the Sunday) which are recognized as binding 
in this country. The morality and the conventions 
may widely differ, but the spirit in which they are 
conformed to is the same. 

"Such men cannot be said to live — they exist. 
They do not regulate their powers freely and 
willingly in harmony with the consciously recog- 
nized modes in which the Universe works; they 
simply act on the unverified conceptions and ideas 
which they, and the age and country in which they 
live, happen to have. 

"But something higher than this is possible to 
man ; to something higher than this some men have 
attained. Some men there have been in every age 
who have attained to something more than a mere 
conformity to rules of morality, or a blind obedience 
to the precepts of religion and the dictates of con- 
science. 

"They have been aroused to the consciousness 
of the great Not-Self which surrounds them. They 

[89] 



LIFE 

have recognized that there is a great Spiritual 
Power in the Universe, with whose ceaseless ener- 
gizing they can get into conscious harmony. They 
have become conscious of a Living Will, ever exert- 
ing itself in constant ways, and requiring them to 
exert themselves in similar ways. They have recog- 
nized the high obligation which rests upon them of 
conforming to the modes in which this Living Will 
acts, and have set themselves earnestly to the de- 
lightful task of learning to know it, and of using 
their powers in harmony with it. 

"And doing this, they have felt the pulses of the 
mighty Life of the Universe thrill their whole being 
with an unutterable joy; they have felt, even in the 
midst of pain and outward distress, the blessedness 
of an indestructible peace. They have felt, the 
more they tried to consciously harmonize themselves 
with it, fuller tides of life sweeping through them 
from the Infinite Life of the Eternal Spirit; they 
have tasted those pleasures which are in His right 
hand for evermore. 

"These have been the saints and seers of the 
world. They have been the men who have lived 
in conscious communion with the Central Reality, 
who have made touch with the eternally Real and 
True, and have found a satisfying delight in living 
in harmony with it. They have felt the living 
influences of that Perfect, Self-Existent Life, which, 
in unchanging fulness, endures from eternity to 
eternity, and have drunk pure, deep draughts of 
immortality from the inexhaustible ocean of its 
Truth, its Light, and its Love. 

[90] 



LIFE 

"There have been, of course, many different 
degrees in the fulness with which this conscious- 
ness of harmony with the Eternal Spirit has been 
experienced. One Man alone has been conscious 
of perfect oneness with it, conscious of a communion 
and fellowship marred by no jars or discords. Him 
all the ages have been unanimous in proclaiming 
the Son of God. 

"The rest, though tasting somewhat of the 
fulness of this Life, have been conscious of many 
jarring notes. They have been conscious that they 
have only imperfectly apprehended, and only par- 
tially brought their whole nature into harmony with, 
that Central Reality of which they have the glorious 
consciousness. But still they have taken the grand 
step from existence to life, in attaining to a per- 
sonal knowledge of this Living Will, and in recog- 
nizing that it is their duty (and at the same time a 
joy and delight) to conform to it. Such men have 
found the endeavour to know it better, and get into 
fuller harmony with it, the one supremely worthy 
ambition, the one supremely possible achievement in 
life. 

"I do not enter now into a detailed examination 
of the causes of this mysterious change from exist- 
ence into life, nor into other interesting questions 
connected with the subject.* The change is a mys- 
terious one, and for centuries has greatly exercised 
the minds of theologians. The exact mode in which 
the transition is effected probably varies in the case 
of each individual, but in every case the result is the 

* See note on this subject in the chapter on "Religion." 

[91] 



LIFE 

same. That result is the recognition by the person- 
ality of a Personality in the Universe — a Person- 
ality with the laws of whose Life the awakened 
spirit realizes that it is its supreme duty and delight 
to get into harmony — a harmony which is a con- 
scious harmony, a sympathetic vibration of life with 
Life, of soul with Soul. That, and that only, is 
Life. 

"Not till a man, passing beyond all mere 
unintelligent conformity to rules of morality and 
human conventions, strives to possess himself, in 
conscious and intelligent harmony with the prin- 
ciples which regulate the Central Life of the Uni- 
verse — not till then can he be said to begin to live, 
for not till then can the Eternal Spirit begin to pour 
through the open channels of his being the inex- 
haustible flood of His fulness; not till then can 
the chords of his nature vibrate with the mighty 
music of the Heart of the Eternal." 

To the above note, the following, which imme- 
diately succeeds it in my friend's note-book, is evi- 
dently supplementary : — 

"It has long been a tenet of religion that the 
only opportunity afforded to man of gaining self- 
mastery, and joining in the life of the Eternal, is 
that which the present life affords. 

"I cannot see any reason for this conclusion, and 
I can see many reasons for coming to a contrary 
one. It was natural for men to hold this view in 
those times when narrower and less complete ideas 
concerning the human race, concerning Life, and 
concerning the Eternal held sway; but it seems im- 
possible to hold it now, in the face of the fuller 

[92] 



LIFE 

knowledge which we possess to-day on these sub- 
jects. 

"For we know now that the individual cannot be 
held responsible for all the defects and imperfec- 
tions of his nature ; that when he wakes to conscious- 
ness it is not as a pure, white soul, unsullied by evil, 
but as a member of a race scored with imperfec- 
tions, of which he is perforce compelled to take a 
share, — often having to undertake a lifelong strug- 
gle against feelings and desires entailed in him by 
heredity, which he loathes from his inmost soul. 
We know now that the short span of human life is 
far too brief to decide that struggle, even when the 
man has awakened to a clear consciousness of the 
right and the true; and that there are many, per- 
haps the majority of the race, who, through no 
fault of their own, never in this life wake to this 
consciousness — never even have the chance of at- 
taining to Life. 

"Moreover, we have no warrant in experience 
for concluding that character is finally fixed in any 
case by the life lived here. The greatest saint has 
felt how feeble has been his touch on Life, com- 
pared with all its infinite possibilities ; and the 
greatest sinner has never been so vile as to warrant 
us in dogmatically affirming that he has lost all 
chance of winning Life. 

"And above all, it is unbelievable that the Eternal 
Fact which the best have believed to be also the 
Eternal Love, which has created us to share eter- 
nally in its Life and its Love, can fail in its en- 
deavour, — can rest content with only a partial har- 
vest of the souls it has brought into existence, — can 

[93] 



LIFE 

endure either to let some wander lone and lost in 
its universe for ever, or to blot them out of being 
altogether as abortions, whom the utmost skill could 
not cure, whom the utmost love could not win. 

"But while believing, for these reasons, that the 
opportunities of gaining Life are not limited to 
this world — that, indeed, they are not limited at all, 
but are as infinite and eternal as 'that God who 
ever lives and loves' — we must not lose sight of 
other aspects of the question. 

"It must never be forgotten that the Great 
Personality — the Living Will of which man is 
conscious — energizes in constant ways, and that 
only by using his powers in similar ways can man 
share in its endless Life. 

"In other words, it has a moral character, which 
we designate by the term 'holiness,' and the spirit 
of its Life is Love. Consequently, man must 
make these the key-note of his life, if he would live 
in harmony with it and share in its fulness. Why 
it is so we do not know — it is not likely we shall 
ever know. We touch here the fundamental 
characteristics of being. God is Light, and God 
is Love; that is, final, ultimate Truth; our spirits 
can feel it and rejoice in it; our minds can never 
understand it. 

"But feel it our spirits must before they can enter 
into Life. The whole Universe is tuned to the key- 
note of Love, and to it our spirits must be tuned in 
order to become 'one' with it; we must remain for 
ever in the outer darkness until we have willingly 
conformed to that fundamental law of all Life. 
Nothing else is Life but this willing energizing of 

[94] 



LIFE 

the spirit of man in conscious harmony with the 
energizing of the Eternal Spirit. 

"Now is is useless to deny that man may 
long exist without thus consciously energizing in 
harmony with the Eternal Spirit. It is evident that 
he may even long exist without consciously possess- 
ing himself in any way, being simply the sport of 
unguided feelings, passions, and impulses, and also 
that his endeavour to regulate himself may long be 
unintelligent, and prompted by fear and not by love. 
Still further, it cannot be denied that the liberty 
which he possesses permits him to consciously ener- 
gize in opposition to the Eternal, — permits of his 
doing evil when he knows that to do good is the true 
and only law of Life, — permits of his braving the 
Eternal and going on his own wild, wilful way in 
spite of clear knowledge of what He is. 

"I have put the case thus strongly because 
there do seem to be extreme cases of this kind — 
men, for example, like Iago, or the villain in The 
Ring and the Book. I put it thus strongly with 
some hesitation, however, for I think it is open to 
question (the point, so far as I am aware, never 
seems to have been discussed) as to whether a man 
ever wilfully acts in opposition to and defiance of 
convictions concerning spiritual truths which he 
feels and realizes. 

"That he often does act in defiance of unverified 
ideas and opinions which he has unhesitatingly ac- 
cepted as true, is certain ; but whether, having come 
face to face with Reality, having had eternal truths 
borne in upon him, he ever has had, or can have, the 
mad wilfulness to shape his course in defiance of 

[95] 



LIFE 

them, seems doubtful. Leaving that point, how- 
ever, and granting that it may be so, it follows that 
man possesses large — extremely large — power of 
missing Life, and energizing in other ways than 
those in which he must energize in order to share 
in the Life of the Eternal. The extent of this power 
we do not know, and consequently we cannot tell 
how long he may by this wilfulness shut himself out 
from Life. Surely, however, it cannot be for ever. 
Milton's Satan is possible for ever in a universe gov- 
erned by a God whose chief attributes are power and 
justice, but not in a universe guided by a God who 
is Love. 

"Be that as it may. we must never lose sight of 
these two essential facts : First, that there is only 
one right way in which man can use his power of 
self-determination, because there is only one way in 
which the Central Power in the Universe energizes ; 
there is only one key-note to which man can rightly 
tune his being — the key-note of love — because that 
is the key-note to which the Being of the Eternal 
Spirit is tuned. And. secondly, that man possesses 
an unknown quantity of power to act in other ways 
than that in which he should act : to choose some 
other end than the final one of willing co-operation 
with the energizings of the Infinite Spirit; and that 
all such perverse action and choice of necessity shut 
him out from Life. and. sooner or later, bring upon 
him sorrow and pain and woe, — the stern reactions 
of the L niverse against the violations of its eternal 
laws. 

'The realization of these truths will prevent any 
man who ventures to look forward with full assur- 

[0] 



ance of hope to the final consummation of all things 

— _e: : .'.- ~h lie :: vwrrvv/ s .'..'-.. : t leer. _:r:e f 

:e Irenes? ::__ Lie L:err_ii Life :: :he 

"/- . :t 5i:r:: — fr:~ v:t""izz -5- -7 -"- '■-' ■-'- ; 

- .:_;. _zi :r:= L_e 7 L" ir.i Lie True Lie -fi; 

:le 1: rzierrvLiie vnLi -5 inLf!eren:e Lie 



iserv besides 
re :: lire ier 



ever 5ir:n~iv he m- - :ehe e Lr~i Lie LrrrrLie Live 

: lire 7::: - -'.:-_ Li men :: iiseif :m re er : 
:: re: :.-_-. e rn rr-rsiie :-.r_d lire rrnbrssrdir :f that 
Lw v :h : se ~rr: iirv :i :i:i L: — e.1> in ±e 
:::7 5 :: ~esr:s : Lrnreiii ever. :: bin zrrL 
£ . . :: se if-: v .;: m vizr Lw vLvLr Ht rrriveL 1: 
:v >;.; ierin nisi ever Le = Lvizeiv :: vreiirr 
ne:e^ : f:r : ir:se :: irr: rrrvLrrriv : v : 
rneiresi :/. Le Ziemii Srirv v:: in _v:r fnL 
nersure He erLryed Lrev —Li b-e " L rr :v:: :: 
lie :: . . men v -.:.: .1 Life "heri :n:e bnev vv 
irsieb i:s 5 eeiness rnd rr: ei irs srirreme : v 
L-:ve vni; ;:~:ei inerr. :: sirive ~:zz = L" lireir 
: er :: i:f: ri.eir feil :~ -men ur 1: :iie Life :f 
L :ve 

[97] 



LIFE 

"The above considerations* are based on the 
assumption that both existence and life are un- 
ending. 

"If they express the truth concerning the nature 
of the Eternal and the nature of man, I cannot see 
how this- assumption can be avoided; infinite time 
can alone form a fitting time-sphere for beings 
framed to share in the Life of the Eternal. 

"And if the heart of the Eternal is Love, — if 
Love brought man into being with the intent to 
make him share for ever in the sweetness of its un- 
ending blessedness, — I cannot see how we can avoid 
the conclusion that it will succeed in its beneficent 
purposes. 

"The great world-processes may take long to 
complete; but if man and God are what I believe 
them to be, only one consummation is possible. 
When the Eternal pronounces His great work 
finished, the whole phalanx of humanity must stand 
before Him in the full possession of conscious 
power, and of conscious control over it, in harmony 
with the principles which regulate His Being, and 
therefore all being. And the muster-roll will never 
be called so long as one soul still wanders in the 
Universe unpossessed of its birthright, unconscious 
of this perfection of Life, irresponsive to the mighty 
throbbing of that Living Love, whose pulses beat 
from eternity to eternity — that Living Love which 
takes form in Universes, and stars, and organisms, 

*[I am still copying my friend's manuscripts, but, from 
the line which he draws, he apparently wrote this note 
after reading over the previous one, and probably after 
an interval of time.] 

[98] 



LIFE 

and souls, in the never-tiring endeavour to give 
fuller expression to its own rapturous Life. 

"If, however, what I have written above does not 
express the truth of things; — if that great Power, 
in whose presence we unceasingly are, does not en- 
ergize in constant ways, with which we can get into' 
conscious harmony; or if, having created us for that 
end, it cannot realize it; or if, again, its Life is not 
endless, and the whole Universe is sweeping to some 
fathomless pit of utmost nothingness — then it is use- 
less to discuss this question, or indeed any question, 
except the one how to accomplish our annihilation; 
for existence is a curse, and life not worth living. 

"The view we take of this matter must entirely 
depend on the convictions which we hold concern- 
ing the nature and character of the Eternal, and 
the nature of man; discussion is superfluous if we 
agree on these points ; useless if we differ. 

"It may be noted, however, that the assumption 
that existence is endless underlies the whole of the 
teaching of Jesus, and has been almost universally 
accepted by those who have embraced the Christian 
religion. 

"Christianity has long familiarized men's minds 
with the idea of a life of unending happiness in 
store for the good, and one of unending misery for 
the bad; and though the forms which this doctrine 
has assumed have almost wholly obscured the real 
teaching of Jesus, yet there is no doubt that the 
assumption of the unending nature of all existence 
which underlies it is one which the Great Teacher 
made. His teaching, indeed, is unintelligible with- 
out it. It has only been owing to the misunder- 

[99] 

L.ofC. 



LIFE 

standing of that teaching, and the introduction of 
questions which never occupied His attention at 
all, that some, of late years, have begun to question 
that assumption, and to anticipate annihilation for 
the bad, instead of eternal misery. And truly, if 
Jesus had taught that the wicked would be fixed 
for ever in a state of misery after death, or at any 
future time, pity and compassion might well prompt 
us to endeavour to give to the word 'eternal,' when 
applied to that state, some other meaning than that 
of endless time, or in some other way to get rid of 
an idea so repulsive to our noblest feelings, and so 
inconsistent with Jesus' own teaching concerning 
the character of the Eternal. 

"But in reality, the question as to whether the 
individuals of the race would immediately after 
death, or at any future time, be finally fixed in a 
state of bliss or woe — the question which has most 
occupied the minds of those who have accepted the 
teaching as authoritative — was one which never 
engaged the attention of Jesus at all. The truths 
He taught are spiritual truths, which must remain 
true as long as the Eternal endures. They relate 
to eternal states of being, in one or other of which 
all men must necessarily be. They assume that 
man has the power of eternally being in one or other 
of these states, but they lie in a wholly different 
sphere from all questions relating to the ultimate 
destiny of the individual. On questions of this sort, 
Jesus spoke not a word. He contented Himself 
with pointing out the eternal characteristics of true 
Life — that high Life of oneness with the Eternal 
which He lived. 

[ioo] 



LIFE 

"He showed men how they might 'enter into 
Life,' by showing them what the Life of the Eternal 
was. Life lived on any other lines, He taught, was 
not Life. It was only a state of existence full of 
unrest, — of weeping, and wailing, and gnashing of 
teeth, having these qualities pertaining to it eter- 
nally, and tending continually to produce them more 
completely, because it was out of harmony with the 
Life of the Eternal; just as the Life which He re- 
vealed was an eternally joyful and blessed one be- 
cause it was in harmony with the Life of Him 
whom He called God and Father. 

" 'I show you,' He said, 'what Life is. I de- 
clare to you the key-note to which the Universe is 
tuned. God is Love; and therefore it is only by 
becoming pure and holy that you can live in har- 
mony with Him. God is your Father; therefore it 
is only by becoming His sons that you can share in 
all His wealth of Life, and Light and Love. These 
are the fundamental characteristics of the Universe ; 
the constant ways in which the Eternal Spirit ener- 
gizes; unless you willingly conform to these, you 
cannot have Life ; you must eternally exist in a state 
of unrest and dissatisfaction.' 

"It will be at once seen how totally distinct 
from this teaching are all philosophical speculations 
concerning the ultimate destiny of any individual 
of the race; while, at the same time — inasmuch as 
the proclamation of eternal states of joy or woe 
requires by implication the eternal existence of 
beings to enjoy or suffer in those states — the 
assumption of the endlessness of existence under- 
lies it 

[IOI] 



LIFE 

"How long men will continue to exist miserably 
before they learn to live; — how often the avenging 
waves of the Divine Nemesis will sweep away the 
fabrics they have painfully reared, and leave them 
to begin their labours anew, till, baffled and broken, 
they learn their utter inability to accomplish any- 
thing, save in harmony with the Eternal Will of the 
Eternal Spirit, — this we know not; how can we 
know?" 

I find many short notes scattered through my 
friend's note-books and manuscripts embodying 
thoughts more or less closely related to the above. 
A few of these I insert here, before concluding the 
chapter. 

"Pondering over the present state of the race, 
I am forced to the conclusion that what we see is 
only the early stage of a vast development. Such 
hard-won experience cannot be lost; such lofty 
powers cannot be wasted; some glorious consum- 
mation must await a race of beings so highly gifted 
and given such difficult paths to tread. We stand 
at a point in that development at which the outline 
of the great world-plan can be dimly discerned ; but 
all the filling in has yet to be accomplished. 

"The little fragment of the life of the individual, 
which is all we see here, absolutely forces us to 
the conclusion that there is endless life ahead. 
Man's undeveloped powers, unrealized hopes, un- 
compensated pains, unretrieved errors, unrepented 
sins, cannot be petrified by the accident of death; 
they must be perfected, realized, justified, remedied, 
atoned for." 

[102] 



LIFE 

"I suspect we cannot even begin to dream at 
present what this strange phenomena is which we 
call Life, which underlies all the faculties, powers, 
and functions of the body and mind, but is not they. 

"It pulses and throbs through Nature, appear- 
ing in man, in animals, in plants ; in forms gigantic 
as the elephant, and forms too minute to be made 
visible by the strongest microscope. 

"It has such a desire to express itself that it makes 
a thousandfold more provision for its perpetuation 
than is necessary, displaying in this respect a prodi- 
gality which, were we not, owing to our complete 
ignorance, compelled to suspend our judgment, we 
should be tempted to designate waste. We know 
nothing of it; the closest scrutiny of Science has 
failed to bring us any nearer to the solution of the 
mystery. 

"We can only accept the fact; and endeavour to 
complete that correspondence which, experience 
shows us, is possible between life as we find it in 
ourselves, and the Universe throbbing with Life 
which is without us." 

"Argument is useless with men who live in ideas ; 
it is superfluous with those who live in Truth. To 
live, speak, act, in the Truth, as far as we see and 
know it — that is the one thing needful. We are 
bound by so doing to win those who are 'of the 
Truth,' sooner or later. 

"As to why there are some who are not 'of the 
Truth,' that question can never be answered; we 
can only accept the fact, as Jesus did. Yet is there 
a way to win them, — a sure way, I think, sooner or 

[103] 



LIFE 

later; and that is, by dying for them. They will 
thus be won to the Truth some day, through the 
constraining power of self-sacrificing Love. 

"In this glorious work of redemption we can all 
take a part; dying for men, and thus breaking the 
power of sin and selfishness, even as Jesus did. 
And since the Central Fact of the Universe is Love, 
all such 'dying' is one with that Central Life, since 
Love is a continual giving away of self. 

"Hence it is true, eternally, everlastingly, in- 
finitely true, you can never get to the bottom of the 
Truth, that the path to Life is the path of self-re- 
nunciation." 

"We men here on earth are like travelers be- 
lated in the snow ; we must keep moving or we die. 
The strong desire is to rest ; to build a little paradise, 
and take our ease therein; to live in the environ- 
ment, the habits, the thoughts, which have gathered 
round us, or into which we have drifted. 

"But such life is death. We are heirs of the In- 
finite, and contentment with the finite is a selling of 
our birthright for a mess of pottage. Therefore 
does Heaven never allow us to keep our little para- 
dise long; or, if she does, it is the mark of her sever- 
est displeasure. Rather she continually urges us to 
press on, and seize the greater good which she 
would fain bestow upon us. 

"Therefore she sends shocks, calamities, bewilder- 
ments, pains, sorrows, cares, losses, sickness, death." 

"Men can get what they like in life, but never 
without sacrifices. Let them choose how they will, 
their choice inevitably throws other things into op- 

[104] 



LIFE 

position, because they are, by their very nature, con- 
traries to the things they choose. 

"This is owing to the fact that man possesses 
various orders of powers, and, consequently, is en- 
abled to make choice of various orders of 'the good/ 
But as he is at present constituted, and holding the 
relations which he at present does with the Uni- 
verse, he cannot make choice of any one of these, 
and set himself steadily to the pursuit of it, without 
disregarding some of the conditions which must be 
complied with if some other 'good' is to be gained. 
No choice which he can make, no course of action 
which he may devise, can at once put him into pos- 
session of all the 'good' at which he is capable of 
arriving. 

"This being so, the true art of living must con- 
sist in sacrificing lower 'goods' for higher ones; 
temporal advantages for eternal ones ; fleeting pleas- 
ures for abiding ones ; that which belongs to our 
conditioning for that which belongs to our person- 
ality. It is an art but little understood. Few rec- 
ognize the necessity of practising it. Continually 
do we find people (most inconsistently) striving 
after lower forms of the 'good' (or even after higher 
ones), and yet grumbling that they do not have the 
others as well. How many men do we find who 
have devoted all their energies to gaining wealth, 
disappointed because it does not bring with it peace, 
and satisfaction for the higher needs of their nature ? 
How many good and pious people do we find dis- 
appointed because their goodness does not bring 
them success in life? And yet how irrational to 
expect it! The man who seeks wealth as the chief 

[105] 



LIFE 

'good' gets what wealth can give — freedom from 
care concerning the wants of the body, and a large 
share in the good things of this life; this is all 
wealth can give. The man who lives a good and 
honest life gets the esteem of all good men, and the 
consciousness of rectitude; but has no right to ex- 
pect a large measure of worldly success as the direct 
result of his goodness and honesty. As each sows, 
so he reaps ; but the harvest is of the same kind as 
the seed sown. Heaven does not reward the man 
who makes the pursuit of wealth his first concern, 
with spirituality; nor the man who aims at spirit- 
uality, with worldly success. 

"The entire ignorance which men display of these 
laws of sowing and reaping is nowhere more clearly 
manifested than in marriage. 

"Men choose their wives, — men and women 
choose one another, — for a great variety of reasons, 
such as beauty, grace, amiability, money, etc. ; and 
as a rule they get what they desire. But what folly 
to expect as well (having only taken one thing into 
account in making their choice) all those other qual- 
ities and virtues which are necessary in order to 
make the union a happy one ! What folly to make 
no attempt to cultivate these, when their necessity 
has been made manifest! Only when they choose 
each other for themselves — for what they are and 
not for what they have, for spiritual worth and not 
for physical beauty or wealth — can they expect those 
results which a union founded on such a basis can 
produce, — trust, sympathy, affection, love!" 

"The highest 'good' of which a man can become 
[106] 



LIFE 

possessed must be that which pertains to his person- 
ality, not anything which pertains to the conditions 
which surround it. These are liable to change and 
decay, but that abides. Any 'good' won for the 
body or the mind must be inferior to that won for 
the spirit. To know how to be is to have the high- 
est knowledge; to possess one's self is to gain the 
greatest wealth. 

"And truly, if there is one end which all men 
alike, exclusive of their outward circumstances or 
their various temperaments and talents, can set be- 
fore themselves and to which they can attain; if 
there is one end which all the chances and changes, 
all the trials and sorrows and disappointments of 
life, as well as its joys and successes, tend towards, 
— it is this end of self-possession. We cannot all 
have, but we can all be) and to be on certain well- 
defined lines, not difficult to recognize when the soul 
earnestly seeks, is the end to which the whole Uni- 
verse is striving to lead us." 

"It is doubtless an ordainment of Infinite Wis- 
dom and Love that here, in the initial stages of 
being, when Ave have not yet learned to possess 
ourselves, or to use our wills aright, our volitions 
cannot take immediate effect. They cannot imme- 
diately accomplish themselves, but only mediately, 
on compliance with such conditions as our con- 
stitutions and the laws of the material universe 
impose. That every transgression or neglect of 
these conditions brings the inevitable consequences 
of pain and woe is doubtless a no less beneficial 
arrangement. 

[107] 



LIFE 

"A being endowed with will, in order to learn 
to possess itself (and it must learn to possess itself; 
we cannot conceive of it as instinctively knowing 
how to possess itself, without experience), must be 
conditioned; and in the initial stages, the more 
difficult it is for it to will in oposition to its con- 
ditions, the more easy will it be for it to learn how 
to possess itself in harmony with the Eternal Will. 

"When through these conditions that lesson is 
learnt, we may well suppose that these, being no 
longer needed, will be removed; if, indeed, the 
attainment of self-possession does not itself remove 
them. We may doubtless look forward to a further 
release from hampering conditions when we put 
off this husk of flesh, if we have well learnt what 
its restraints can teach us. Meanwhile let us be 
thankful that we are hampered and restrained. 
What fearful mischief we should work if every 
unregulated volition took immediate effect !" 

"More and more fully do I become convinced, 
as life goes on, that the whole of the varied ex- 
perience which it brings has a purpose, — that it 
is intended to produce spiritual results; that these 
are the only normal results which can be produced. 
To strive for any others is to fight against the 
whole current of the Universe, and must result in 
utter defeat. 

"To learn willingly to be what the Eternal Spirit 
is j — that is the lesson we have set us here; that is 
the lesson which the Eternal is teaching to every 
soul, as fast as the conditions of human freedom 
permit it to learn, and Him to teach." 

[108] 



CHAPTER IV 



FORCES 



I give in this chapter an essay which I find among 
my friend's manuscripts on "The Utilization of 
Forces." Much of the matter which it contains is 
intimately connected with what I have embodied 
in the previous chapters, and forms, I think, a not 
unfitting sequel to them. Some repetition of 
thoughts which the previous chapters contain occurs 
in it, but I have deemed it best to give it as it stands, 
finding it impossible, indeed, to omit or transfer 
anything without obscuring the argument, and mar- 
ring the development of the thought. The essay 
is interesting, because, so far as I can discover, it 
was his final and most deliberate attempt to express 
in scientific phraseology the higher truths of Life. 
Hereafter, as the reader will see in the following 
chapters, having arrived at the conclusion that the 
"fundamental environment" of which man is con- 
scious is a "Living Spirit," he speaks of it, and of 
the "correspondence" man can have with it, not in 
the language of Science, but of human intercourse 
and affection. ^ 

"The secret of success in life is to utilize forces. 
It is only by linking himself to, and falling into the 
line of march of, the great forces by which he is 
surrounded, that man can live. If he ignores or 
opposes them, they will sweep over him and crush 

[109] 



FORCES 

him ; but if he works with them, and utilizes them, 
there seems to be hardly any limit to the control 
which he may gain over them. By stooping to 
obey them, he becomes their lord and master, and 
sways his environment with regal power. 

"These forces are of various orders, correspond- 
ing to the various orders of faculties which make 
up his complex nature ; and in virtue of the posses- 
sion of these various faculties he cannot help being 
conscious of them. But the consciousness of their 
existence is not accompanied by knowledge of the 
ways in which he must act in order to adjust him- 
self to them, nor of the ways in which they work. 
It has been left for him to discover for himself, by 
observation and experience, the laws which regulate 
their flow amidst phenomena. He possesses no 
instinctive knowledge of them; the instinctive ad- 
justment and correspondence which he now accom- 
plishes with many of them, not being inherent in 
his nature, but being the result of the accumulated 
experience of the race, transmitted to him by 
heredity. 

"The reason of the apparent inferiority of man 
in this respect to other living organisms is to be 
found in the fact of his real superiority. He has 
to accomplish his adjustment to the forces in the 
Universe for himself, and to learn to use them 
by observation and experience, because he can use 
them, and is not merely moulded by them passively. 
He possesses personality, i. e. self-consciousness and 
self-determination, which are manifestly higher en- 
dowments than those which are possessed by the 
lower animals, or by the members of the vegetable 

[no] 



FORCES 

: ; : j i ' : . .: i. ii ' 

kingdom; in whose case the adjustment to, and cor- 
respondence with, their environment is unconscious 
and instinctive. The possession of these higher 
endowments brings with it the possibility of far 
higher life than can be attained by any other living 
organisms with which we are acquainted ; they place 
man in an altogether higher plane of being. But 
they bring with them that peculiarity in his relation 
with the Universe which we term responsibility, — 
a peculiarity, the dim shadow of which, indeed, 
seems to appear in the animal world, but which in 
man alone is developed to such an extent as to be- 
come a dominating factor of his life. Man alone 
is fully conscious of power to use the faculties of 
which he finds himself possessed ; and this peculiar- 
ity of his constitution, while it permits him to ex- 
perience additional joys, also brings to him the 
possibility of experiencing deeper woes than can 
come to organisms not endowed with this high 
gift. For the consciousness of power to use facul- 
ties involves the consciousness of power to misuse 
them, which misuse must inevitably be followed, 
sooner or later, by dire retribution. 

"Moreover, the power which man possesses to 
use consciously his faculties, and to control with 
them the forces without him, brings with it the 
commanding necessity that he shall use them, and 
shall master and turn to his own use these external 
forces. 

"Having power to adjust himself to the Universe, 
and to use its forces for his purposes, he does not 
need, in fact he could not possibly have, that in- 
stinctive or unconscious adjustment and corre- 

[mi 



FORCES 

spondence with it, which we find in the case of less 
nobly endowed organisms. 

"Consequently, man has to learn by experience 
how rightly to use his faculties, and how to avoid 
conflict with, and to enlist in his services, the forces 
by which he is surrounded. 

"The Universe lies at his feet; but it can only 
become his prize if he earnestly sets himself to 
read its open secrets. With the powers at his com- 
mand he can exercise boundless control over it; but 
he must do it in its way, not in his own. Any 
departure from its ways are visited with certain 
punishment. 

"Use his powers he must, and the Universe will 
give him unbounded help if he uses them aright, but 
it quickly warns him of all misuse. The pains it 
inflicts when the misuse occurs through ignorance 
are sharp enough, but tenfold greater woes ensue 
when such misuse is wilful — I mean, more partic- 
ularly, in cases where men know what is morally 
right, and do not do it, — from which negligence 
ensues the consciousness of guilt. 

"This is the price which man has to pay for his 
high gifts — a price which, I doubt not, is well 
worth the paying, though sometimes we may feel 
inclined to doubt it when we look around us, and 
see how sternly the price is exacted. The pain, 
woe, and unrest of which the world is so full, seem 
a heavy price to pay for the privilege of learning 
to live. But I do not doubt that the price will not 
be deemed excessive when we have learnt the lesson 
— when the Universe is at our feet, with all its 
boundless wealth of Life and Joy. Then we shall 

[112] 



FORCES 

know that the slow, painful steps by which man 
advanced to the appropriation of his birthright 
were not too painful or too slow ; that what seemed 
to us, in our blindness, needless pain and uncalled- 
for delay, was needful to the uttermost throb, to 
the last lingering second. Then shall we know that 
Heaven's justice is mercy, and her stern retribution 
Love, because then we shall see and know that it 
was Love which planned and guided all, and led us 
through pain, and woe, and sorrow, and fear up to 
the full consciousness of its own rapturous Life, 
up to the full participation of its eternal Joy. 

"This is the goal of the great world-develop- 
ment in the midst of which we find ourselves. We 
are being trained to live; not that poor, meagre 
existence which so many, not yet conscious of their 
nobility, so eagerly grasp at now, but the high 
life of conscious, willing, balanced adjustment and 
response to the Universe in all the modes in which 
it makes itself known to us — Matter, Mind, Spirit. 
The task which the Infinite Spirit has set Himself 
to accomplish, and which we now see Him steadily 
accomplishing, is the task of training in the right 
use of faculties, and in the right use of themselves, 
beings endowed with personality; and methinks it 
is a task fit to engage the powers of the Eternal. 

"The freedom of action and power of choice 
which man possesses allow him to make a selection 
from the different orders of forces which energize 
around him, and to work out various results by 
their means — results which necessarily correspond 
in nature and character to the nature and character 
of the forces he uses. He has a choice of the end 

[113] 



FORCES 

to which he can direct his attention, and, whichever 
he may choose, he is bound to succeed in achieving 
it; for there is no such thing as 'iron destiny.' All 
circumstances are plastic in his hands. No disad- 
vantages of birth, no difficulties which he may en- 
counter, can hinder him from doing what he makes 
up his mind to do, or from gaining what he is deter- 
mined to gain. The greatest disadvantages and the 
most adverse circumstances, or those which appear 
such, if he only is skillful in the use he makes of 
them, will afford him the greatest opportunities for 
achieving his object. He has the moulding of his 
own destiny, and has only himself to blame if, after 
he has done so, he is not contented with the result. 

"But, as I have said, the nature and character 
of the results he can achieve by the use of the 
forces around him, correspond to the nature and 
character of the forces themselves; — the ends at 
which they will enable him to arrive are deter- 
mined by the rank and quality of the force. 

"Thus there are physical forces, by the utilizing 
of which man may assert his supremacy over the 
world of matter; may rule it, instead of being 
ruled by it; may emancipate himself from the con- 
ditions in the midst of which he finds himself, or 
modify them to suit his needs. He can use the 
lightning to flash his messages from continent to 
continent; the hurricane will grind his corn for 
him; the flood will spin his cotton; he can harness 
fire and water to carry him as swiftly as a bird 
over land and sea. 

"The ends which he accomplishes by the skillful 
use of these physical forces are thus, it will be 

[114] 



FORCES 

seen, of the same order and quality as the Forces 
themselves. They are confined to man's physical 
environment; they consist in modifications of his 
external conditions, so far as they relate to that 
environment, to suit his wishes. 

"If he works for these ends, either primarily, by 
endeavouring directly to win control over these 
physical forces, or secondarily, by gaining what 
will put him in a position to use the appliances 
which already exist for controlling them — i. e. by 
gaining wealth — he will without doubt succeed, and 
gain his end. But he must not expect to gain other 
ends as well, if he has thrown all his energies into 
the endeavour to gain this one, and if he has never 
attempted to utilize the other forces of the Universe 
of which he is conscious, and over which he can 
exercise control. 

"For there are other ends which man can set 
before himself, besides that one of mastering phy- 
sical forces and modifying his physical environ- 
ment. And there are other forces in the Universe, 
the utilization of which will enable him to achieve 
greater and more lasting results than he can achieve 
by the utilization of physical forces. He has intel- 
lectual powers, to the cultivation of which he can 
direct his attention, and which will bring to him the 
high prize of knowledge ; powers which, indeed, can 
partially find room for exercise and development in 
gaining mastery over physical forces, but which will 
never yield him all the satisfaction which they can 
yield unless he makes not these material ends, but 
intellectual ones, his goal. 

"Further than that, he has personal powers which 

[us] 



FORCES 

make him conscious of a Personal Power outside 
him. He is conscious that there is a Force in the 
Universe, of a similar quality to the force of person- 
ality within him, by the nature of which his personal 
powers are strictly controlled, and which gives him 
plain intimations when he disregards the laws which 
regulate its flow. It is true that he has hardly yet 
well begun the task of conforming to the laws which 
regulate the flow of this highest Force — that for the 
most part he contents himself with the very partial 
knowledge concerning it which happens to be the 
common property of the age in which he is living, 
and seldom troubles himself to ascertain whether 
fuller and truer knowledge is attainable. But it is 
also true that the disastrous consequences of this 
ignorance and indifference never fail to come upon 
him. He cannot with impunity ignore any of the 
forces by which he is surrounded, more especially 
the Highest and Strongest of them all. His neglect 
of it, and the consequences of his failure to adjust 
himself to it, are everywhere to be seen in the 
unrest and dissatisfaction which most men exhibit 
in their lives; in the woe of which the world is so 
full ; and in the greater part of its pain and sorrow. 
For this Spiritual Force, being the strongest and 
most fundamental of all the forces of which man is 
conscious (all others being, indeed, I believe, re- 
solvable into this),* and demanding that he should 
exercise, in order to correspond with it, the most 
fundamental and the most distinctive characteristic 
of his nature, all want of harmony with it makes 
itself felt through the whole of the environment of 
* See Chapter II. 

[116] 



FORCES 

which he is conscious, and results in a disturbance 
of the due relations with all other forces; which 
consequently retaliate on him in the form of pain, 
or care, or mental unrest for all his failures to 
adjust himself properly to them.. It is at once 
man's duty and his privilege to adjust himself to 
the forces which surround him, and to utilize them 
all; but more especially to gain full knowledge and 
make full use of that Strongest and most Funda- 
mental of them of which he is conscious in virtue 
of the possession of personality. 

"It is of the highest importance, moreover, that, 
having the power to direct his attention to various 
ends, and to accomplish various results by the aid 
of these forces, he should, while not neglecting to 
make use of them all, avoid the error of setting be- 
fore him, as his chief or ultimate aim, the achieving 
of results which, from the nature of the Forces he 
uses, cannot be ultimate — results, in arriving at 
which he does not take into account the higher 
forces, or the higher powers, and consequently 
higher needs, of his nature. 

"That end can only be a final, ultimate end for 
man, and consequently can be the only end to the 
attainment of which he can confidently devote him- 
self, which tends to produce the highest and most 
permanent results conceivable to him. These can 
only be arrived at by directing the highest and most 
fundamental of the powers of his nature to the dis- 
cerning and utilization of the highest and most 
fundamental of the forces outside him; in other 
words, by effecting a full correspondence between 

[117] 



FORCES 

his personality and the Personal Force of the 
Universe. 

"Man can only succeed in gaining rest and satis- 
faction for his entire nature when he has succeeded 
in achieving this. And, further, the reaction of 
this highest Force, when he omits it from his cal- 
culations, is bound, sooner or later, to sweep over 
him and give him terrible evidence of the futility of 
the attempt to ignore it, and of the dire retribution 
which will follow any attempt to oppose it. The 
unerring way in which this highest Force reacts 
upon those who ignore or brave it, and nullifies any 
results which may be accomplished by even the most 
skillful use of lower forces, we see exemplified again 
and again in the lives of men. 

"A striking instance of this is furnished by the 
career of the first Napoleon. He had the will and 
the skill to conquer Europe. But he took no ac- 
count of that Personal Force which flows for ever 
in the direction of justice, truth, and righteousness, 
and, pressing on in his schemes of ambition regard- 
less of it, before long the accumulated force which 
his resistance was continually storing up in greater 
strength, recoiled on him, scattered his schemes to 
the winds, and left him crushed and helpless. 

"The exact reverse was the case with Jesus. All 
the forces of the world were against Him, and con- 
spired to crush Him. But He lived, and worked 
steadily, in harmony with the highest Spiritual 
Force; and though at the close of His life He 
seemed hopelessly at the mercy of the forces He 
opposed, and their triumph over Him seemed com- 
plete, the eighteen centuries which have elapsed 

[118] 



FORCES 

since His defeat have been one continuous demon- 
stration of His victory, — one continuous vindica- 
tion of the truths which He taught, and in harmony 
with which He lived; more especially that master- 
truth, that the force of Love is supreme in power 
over all the other forces in the Universe, and that 
only by linking ourselves with it, can eternal Life 
be gained. 

"In saying that this highest Spiritual Force flows 
in the direction of justice, truth, and righteousness, 
I have assumed it to be true that these are the laws 
which regulate its flow, or rather, to use more ac- 
curate language, that it is in these terms that our 
generalized experience of its effects can be stated; 
for laws (though this has been too often forgotten) 
are simply formulated statements of the effects 
which forces produce in their manifestations to us 
through phenomena — effects which repeated obser- 
vations have proved to be always similar under simi- 
lar circumstances. It is, however, hardly an as- 
sumption that the manifestations of the Spiritual 
Force can be generalized under these laws. What- 
ever differences of opinion may have existed in by- 
gone ages on this point, or may still exist among 
half-civilized or barbarious peoples the conclusions 
concerning the modes in which this Spiritual Force 
works are identical among the nobler races of man- 
kind. They are embodied in the Moral Law. 
This Law is, indeed, recognized with very varying 
degrees of clearness, as well as obeyed with very 
varying degrees of obedience, by the different in- 
dividuals who compose these races; but its grand 

["9] 



FORCES 

outlines are acknowledged by all to be expressed by 
the terms 'Justice,' 'Truth,' and 'Righteousness.' 

"I have already stated my believe that the 
consciousness which man has of the existence of 
forces outside him is not accompanied by knowledge 
of the ways in which they work, nor of the ways of 
which he must act in order to adjust himself to 
them. This, I have said, he has been left to find 
out by observation and experience. 

"I do not except from this statement the know- 
ledge at which man has arrived with regard to the 
modes in which the Spiritual Force works, which 
he has formulated in the terms I have just stated. 

"I know that I venture here on debatable ground, 
and that in this region there are new factors to be 
taken into account, which make the problem an ex- 
tremely complicated one. Possibly I may not yet 
have truly and rightly estimated these. At present 
I can only say that I have hitherto failed to see any 
insuperable difficulties in the way of holding that 
the grand law of development by experience (which, 
we know, is the law which governs man's adjust- 
ment to and control over the forces of the physical 
world) holds good also with regard to his relations 
with the Spiritual Force. Into the intricacies of 
this problem, however, I will not further enter at 
present.* 

"As physical forces manifest themselves through 
phenomena, so does the Spiritual Force manifest it- 
self in human life. Here its presence and power 
are manifestly felt ; for man, in virtue of the posses- 

*For further consideration of this matter (vide Chapter 
VII. 

[I20] 



FORCES 

sion of personality, is directly conscious of it. But 
the fact that hitherto he has hardly utilized it at all, 
but has contented himself with a very imperfect ad- 
justment to it, renders it far more difficult to trace 
its presence and influence than it is to trace the pres- 
ence and influence of other forces. The laws of 
justice, truth, and righteousness assert themselves 
as unerringly in the lives of men as the law of grav- 
itation does in the natural world. But, if, amid the 
multitude and complexity of the phenomena 
through which this latter law manifests itself, it re- 
mained long undiscovered, we ought not to be sur- 
prised if these Spiritual Laws are often almost im- 
possible to trace amidst the immensely greater com- 
plexity and confusion of human life. Indeed, were 
we destitute of all previous knowledge on the sub- 
ject, the task of deducing the laws of the Spiritual 
Force from the complicated facts of human life 
might well seem — as indeed, it has seemed in earlier 
ages of the world's history — a hopeless one to at- 
tempt. 

"For there is this peculiarity about the work- 
ings of the Spiritual Force — it does not produce 
results so immediately as physical forces do. The 
law of righteousness has a wider sweep than the 
laws which express the action of physical forces. 
The effects which result from its action (or rather 
which can be formulated as it) are not so instant- 
aneous as the effects produced by these. The short 
span of the life of the individual often does not 
allow time for its presence to become manifest; to 
determine the arc of the majestic curve along which 

[121] 



FORCES 

it moves, the lives of generations and of nations 
must be studied. 

"But we in these days do not require to start 
afresh in the investigation of either of these prob- 
lems. Both the law of gravitation and the moral 
law are too well established to admit of being ques- 
tioned. Indeed, just as it would be well-nigh im- 
possible for us to emancipate ourselves from the in- 
tellectual atmosphere which surrounds us from our 
birth, which is impregnated with this truth of phys- 
ics, so it would be even more impossible to emanci- 
pate ourselves from the moral atmosphere in which 
we are immersed, which is impregnated with this 
truth of morals, and from the still stronger testi- 
mony of conscience.* We are the heirs of all the 
ages; we do not stand where our fathers stood; we 
could not if we would. We inherit the accumu- 
lated experience of the world with regard to all the 
forces which surround us — the spiritual as well as 
the physical. It would be folly (even if it were 
possible) to reject this heritage of the past, and 
to start on the lonely quest for law amidst the 
labyrinths in which it hides itself in the pheno- 
menal world. We should be thankful that we can 
appropriate the precious results which have been 
arrived at by the heavy travail of humanity in the 
ages which are past, and endeavour to show by our 
nobler lives that its pangs have not been in vain. 

"It is folly to waste time and strength in redis- 
covering what has already been discovered. De- 

*In which, it will be remembered, my friend held that 
heredity played a very important part with most men 
(vide Chapter IV). 

[122] 



FORCES 

pend upon it, the Universe yet contains an innum- 
erable host of undiscovered truths; let us press on 
to discover them. Let us accept the truths which 
the past has bequeathed to us — verifying them, as 
we speedily can, by bringing our lives into tune with 
them — and, from the more elevated platform which 
we are thus enabled to reach, take a deeper plunge 
into the fathomless ocean of Truth. 

"Even if our experience does not for a consider- 
able time enable us to verify the conclusions at 
which previous generations have arrived with re- 
gard to the modes in which the Spiritual Force 
works — (and this may not improbably happen, 
owing to the fact to which I have just alluded, that 
this Force has a wider sweep, and does not produce 
such instantaneous effects as the physical forces), 
it is only wisdom for us to accept them, and to regu- 
late our lives by them. For who are we, that we 
should dare — even when experience is most be- 
wildering, when pain is sharpest, and sorrow heavi- 
est, and hope in justice and right most faint, — to 
question the truthfulness of those clear and unhesi- 
tating utterances which in all ages have come from 
the lips (their hearts approving) of those whom the 
world acknowledges to be her noblest and best; 
more especially from the lips of Him whose pure 
white life, clear vision, Divine wisdom, and still 
Diviner love, place Him without peer on the highest 
pinnacle as the most glorious of earth's Sons, — 
those clear utterances which assure us that the laws 
which unceasingly regulate the flow of the Spirit- 
ual Force, and to which man must conform himself 
if he would find rest and satisfaction, and live in 

[123] 



FORCES 

harmony with the Universe, are indubitably the 
laws of justice and of righteousness, of mercy and 
of love? 

"It may be said that there are many important 
exceptions to the doctrine I have enunciated that 
the Spiritual Force always reacts upon those who 
ignore or brave it, and nullifies the results which 
they may have attempted to achieve without taking 
it into acocunt. 'What,' it may be asked, 'about 
those numerous cases of prosperous villainy with 
which history, and possibly our own experience, 
makes us acquainted? Where is there any indica- 
tion in these cases of the reactions of the Spiritual 
Force? These men have scorned the laws of 
righteousness, and have occupied themselves with 
schemes of selfish indulgence and lawless ambition 
in open defiance of them, and no avenging Nemesis 
has overtaken them; they have achieved their 
purposes, and lived out their days in wealth and 
honour, and even died, many of them, without fear 
or remorse.' 

"The objection is a pertinent one. The facts 
on which it is based long perplexed the minds of 
the best men of the Hebrew nation, and they never 
seem to have arrived at a quite satisfactory explan- 
ation of them. In fact, they could not; they did 
not know enough about the ways in which the 
Spiritual Force works in life to be able to solve the 
problem. It says much for their faith, and hope, 
that they were still able to trust in the Eternal, and 
to believe that He ruled righteously in the earth, 
with that insoluble problem weighing on their 
minds. 

[124] 



FORCES 

"For us, however, the problem is not insoluble. 
We know now far more about the workings of 
forces than the Hebrews did, — incalculably more 
than they knew about the workings of physical 
forces, and far more than they knew about the 
workings of the Spiritual Force. 

"I think it is quite possible to show that here too 
the balance of justice is even, and that such laws 
as 'action and reaction are mutual and opposite,' or 
'every effect must have an adequate cause,' are as 
true with regard to the manifestations of the Spirit- 
ual Force as they are of physical ones. 

"There were two reasons which prevented the 
Hebrews who grappled with this problem from 
arriving at the correct solution of it. The first 
was their erroneous limitation of the time within 
which they expected the reactions of the Spiritual 
Force to take place, to the lifetime of the man who 
neglected or braved it. The second was their mis- 
understanding of the real nature of the results 
which follow from living in harmony with it, and 
of the end which can be arrived at by co-operating 
with it — in other words, ignorance of the nature 
and quality of the Life which results from man's 
adjustment to and his utilization of this force. 

"With regard to the former, it was only natural 
that men who did not apprehend the nature of the 
Life which results from correspondence with the 
Spiritual Force sufficiently clearly to believe in im- 
mortality* (though some of them seem to have 
very nearly arrived at this truth, grasping it, how- 

* My friend's thoughts on the subject of Eternal Life 
are to be found in the previous chapter. 

[125] 



FORCES 

ever, as a hope, not holding it confidently as a 
conviction) — should expect to see the reactions of 
the Spiritual Force manifesting themselves within 
the space of time which is occupied by a human 
life. In no other way could they imagine that 
the justice of the Eternal would work. For this 
reason the author of the Book of Job makes the 
Lord bless the latter end of Job more than his 
beginning, and give him 'twice as much as he had 
before,' i.e. 'fourteen thousand sheep, and six 
thousand camels, and a thousand yoke of oxen, 
and a thousand she-asses,' and makes him live 
a hundred and fifty years after his afflictions, and 
see 'his sons, and his sons' sons, even four genera- 
tions.'* It was not really true to life — this con- 
ception of the poet with regard to the way in which 
the Spiritual Force responds to the efforts men 
make to adjust themselves to it, but it was ideally 
true, according to the conceptions which he had of 
it ; it was the only ideal picture he could draw of 
life with his knowledge of it. Other Old Testa- 
ment writers who perplexed their minds with the 
same problem — keeping their eyes more firmly fixed 
on the facts of life, and not finding satisfaction in 
imagining a poetic justice which they could not see 
— often arrived at far less satisfactory conclasions. 
They never quite lost the hope that the Eternal 
would reward every man according to his works, 
but often enough they could see no indications that 
He was doing this in the only way in which they 
conceived it possible to be done; and the cry they 
* Comp. Job i, 3; xlii. 10, 12. 

[126] 



FORCES 

raised to Him was often almost the cry of despair. 
Look, for instance, at the tenth Psalm — 

" 'Why standest Thou afar off, O Lord? why 
hidest Thou Thyself in times of trouble? The 
wicked in his pride doth persecute the poor,' and 
the cry closes with words which contain quite as 
much of yearning entreaty as of hope : 'Lord, Thou 
hast heard the desire of the humble, Thou wilt 
cause Thine ear to hear, to judge the fatherless 
and the oppressed, that the man of the earth may 
no more oppress.' 

"Many similar strains may be found m the 
Psalms;* for this was a problem which perplexed 
many minds. They could not solve it; for even 
the fact, which they clearly recognized, that the 
Eternal visited the sins of the fathers upon the 
children, to the third and fourth generation, did 
not satisfy their sense of justice, when their non- 
recognition of the truth concerning Eternal Life 
prevented them from awarding any adequate com- 
pensation to the good man who died without being 
rewarded in this world for his goodness. 

"I have already stated that the reactions of the 
Spiritual Force often extend over far larger spaces 
of time than are occupied by a single life. This 
has long been acknowledged; the many proverbs 
which in many languages express that truth testify 
convincingly to its antiquity and its widespread 
recognition. Indeed, no thoughtful student of 
human life can well avoid recognizing it, so plainly 
is that law of its working revealed in the inherited 

*See Psalms x. (vers. I, 2, 17, 18), xi., xii., xvii. (espe- 
cially vers. 13, 14), and lviii. 

[127] 



FORCES 

traits of individuals, and in the history of nations. 
The justice of this law might well seem doubtful to 
those who had not yet laid hold of the truth of im- 
mortality, and who did not understand the nature 
of the rewards which correspondence with this 
force ensures, — as indeed it must still seem doubt- 
ful to those who do not understand what true Life 
is. But the fact is everywhere visible, and can be 
read in the open book of life by all who have the 
eyes to see. The Spiritual Force flows steadily and 
ceaselessly through the stream of human existence, 
ever producing its sure effects ; effects of boundless 
beneficence for the individuals or nations who duly 
recognize the modes in which it exerts itself, and 
throw their lives into the sweep of its living influ- 
ences ; effects of direst woe for those who ignore or 
brave it — all the more certain and terrible (as in 
the case of the French Revolution) if its due action 
is retarded or thwarted for years or for genera- 
tions. 

"But the undue limitation of the time within 
which they expected the reactions of the Spiritual 
Force to manifest themselves was the most serious 
miscalculation made by those of the Hebrew nation 
who grappled with this problem. 

"For they felt, and rightly felt, that there ought 
to be some personal and immediate results follow- 
ing on obedience to the commandments of the Eter- 
nal. And not understanding fully the real nature 
and quality of the Life which results from corre- 
spondence with the Spiritual Force (as, indeed, they 
could not, so long as their conceptions of life were 
bounded by the horizon of the present world), they 

[128] 



FORCES 

could not conceive of any adequate result, except 
the rewarding by material prosperity of the man 
who obeyed His laws. 

"And in thus expecting immediate personal 
results to follow from obedience to the laws of the 
Eternal, they were right. Their error lay in the 
conception they formed of the character of these 
results. They conceived that they must be ma- 
terial: they did not comprehend that the results 
which forces produce, differ according to the 
quality of the force, and the quality of the powers 
in man by which it is apprehended and utilized. 
Nor had they succeeded in more than dimly dis- 
cerning the still higher truth that the true and 
lasting results which are achieved by aiming at the 
highest ends do not consist in having but in being; 
in other words, that Life, ever-expanding Life, is 
the most final result which can be arrived at by 
man: not any wealth, whether of material goods, 
or of knowledge, which may come to him in his 
endeavours more fully to lay hold of this final and 
infinite prize. 

"But this is undoubtedly the fact; and is true 
with regard to all the orders of powers which we 
possess. Material possessions are of no value in 
themselves, they are only to be prized by us as 
means whereby the faculties which correspond 
with this part of our environment can be nourished 
and exercised, — (though in most cases they are 
sought after, not for the increased Life they bring, 
but for the increased pleasure — an altogether lower 
aim, and a fatal misdirection of the attention from 
the true mark). Similarly, the increased power 

[129] 



FORCES 

which the intellectual faculties gain by exercise is 
the final end to be aimed at in exerting them; in 
other words, more intellectual Life — not the 
knowledge which we acquire in our endeavour to 
gain this greater fulness of Life. And this is truest 
of all in regard to the highest powers which we 
possess — the powers pertaining to personality. It 
is not the knowledge which we can gain by the 
right exercise of the powers of personality, still 
less the joys which result from their use, which is 
a final end. The only true end to strive for in 
exercising these powers is Life — the boundless, 
eternal Life which results from man's correspond- 
ence with the boundless, eternal, Spiritual Environ- 
ment of which his possession of personality makes 
him conscious. 

"The Hebrews, I say, who grappled with the 
problem did not fully understand this; nor did 
they understand that there are differences in the 
qualities of the results which follow from corre- 
spondence with the various orders of forces. 

"They consequently looked for material results 
to follow from obedience to spiritual laws — a 
natural mistake for them to fall into with their 
limited time-view and imperfect knowledge of the 
Spiritual Force, but none the less a mistake, render- 
ing it impossible for them to solve the problem. 

"For though doubtless there is a considerable 
amount of truth in the proverb, 'Honesty is the 
best policy,' and in the long run a man who lives 
by the laws of justice and righteousness is likely 
to have as much, if not more, worldly success than 
the man who does not; yet not only is the reverse 

[130] 



FORCES 

of this, in a great many cases, likely to happen, but 
it is altogether a mistake to expect these results 
to follow from obedience to laws of an altogether 
different order. 

"The true results which follow from obedience 
to spiritual laws are not material, but spiritual. 
Obedience to the laws of justice and righteousness 
brings to the man who obeys sure and satisfying 
results, in an increased knowledge of what they 
are, and increased delight in living in harmony 
with them. Inasmuch as the Force which makes 
for righteousness is the highest and strongest of 
which we can have consciousness, and ultimately 
"brings everything into conformity with its laws, 
obedience to them may (indirectly) produce 
material results for the man who obeys; but not 
unless he obeys as well the laws which regulate 
the flow of the forces which directly produce these 
results. But it is not by any means certain that 
these results will be produced. It is no part of the 
direct purpose of the Spiritual Force to produce 
them ; and the man who obeys, — living among men 
who do not obey, but who make it their end to 
achieve material results, without taking this high- 
est Force into consideration, — is far more likely to 
suffer (materially) by his obedience than to gain 
by it. 

"And this brings me to the real answer to the 
objections which, I supposed, could be raised to 
the statement that the Spiritual Force is bound to 
react on the man who ignores or braves it. 

"The Spiritual Force does not always react upon 
the man who neglects it, by nullifying the results 

[131] 



FORCES 

which he has striven to achieve without taking it 
into account. There are many important excep- 
tions to the rule, which is illustrated by the career 
of the first Napoleon. It often does thus react. 
The career of Cagliostro perhaps affords a more 
striking confirmation of this fact than even that of 
Napoleon. But more often reactions manifest 
themselves during succeeding generations than dur- 
ing the lifetime of the individual who has ignored 
it. This fact, moreover, must also be taken into 
account — that even the men who ignore it most 
generally do adjust themselves to such an extent 
to the most universally recognized of the modes 
in which it energizes, as to avoid being immediately 
shattered by antagonism to it. Consequently, they 
often arrive safely at life's close, prosperous with 
that prosperity which can be arrived at by skilful 
adjustment to and utilization of other forces, and 
apparently untouched by the reactions of the Spirit- 
ual Force. 

"In order to understand the great compensations 
of the Universe, and to comprehend the real loss 
which more than nullifies any apparent gain which 
may result from the neglect to correspond with this 
Force, we must look, not to the material results 
which may follow from such correspondence (for, 
as I have said, material good as often as not will 
not result), but at the spiritual results. We must 
balance the spiritual gains of the man who enters 
into this correspondence, with the non-spiritual 
gains of the man who does not. In other words, 
we must determine the quality of the lives which 
result from correspondence with these various 

[i3 2 ] 



FORCES 

classes of forces — their relative worth, fulness, and 
satisfyingness. 

"But this the Hebrews who grappled with the 
problem could not do; both because they did not 
clearly recognize that there were differences in the 
quality of these results, because of the limitation 
of their time-view to the present life; and also 
because of the impossibility (partly owing to this 
limited time-view, partly to their failure to under- 
stand fully the nature of the Spiritual Force) of 
their clearly distinguishing between the two classes 
of relations which it is possible for man to sustain 
to this Force, and indeed to all forces. 

"I said at the commencement that the secret 
of success in all life is to utilize forces; and I 
have endeavoured to distinguish carefully all along 
between adjustment to the modes in which forces 
work, and the utilization of them. Occasionally 
I have used the word 'correspond' to express both 
these relations. 

"Now, this distinction between the adjustment 
to forces, and their utilization, is an exceedingly 
important one. Under one or the other of these 
two kinds of relations with the forces outside it, 
organized life, of which we have any knowledge, 
can be ranged. Almost all the relations, however, 
which all living organisms except man sustain to 
forces, can be classed under the former term {i. e. 
adjustment). Man alone possesses the power to 
control and utilize the forces which play around 
him; or, if some dim shadow of this power seems 
to appear in some other members of the animal 

[133] 



FORCES 

kingdom, it is so limited as not for a moment to 
bear comparison with his. 

"We may say, indeed, that it is the possession 
of this power which constitutes his superiority to 
all other members of the organic world : in virtue 
of it he is man, and not merely one variety of the 
brute creation. 

"How he became possessed of this power we 
do not know, and we are not likely to know. 
Science has within the last fifty years clearly dis- 
closed the truth that development is the grand 
characteristic of the scheme of things in the midst 
of which we find ourselves. But not only is the 
reason of this hidden from us, but the steps by 
which the creation has mounted to its pres- 
ent height are as yet almost entirely unknown, 
and the mists of the future hide those which it has 
yet to climb. 

"Consequently, though it is extremely probable 
that man, the owner of the highest powers, and 
the possessor of the most complex organism of 
which we have any knowledge, is connected by 
the chain of development with the lowest and 
simplest organisms; yet not only are we still 
unable to trace the links of the chain which con- 
nects him with the ape and the ascidian, but we 
are utterly in the dark as to how and when he 
took that step which differentiated him from all 
the rest of the brute creation; — that step which 
placed him in the possession of personality: which 
enabled him to live instead of simply existing; to 
exercise reason instead of following instinct; which 
required that he should effect a radical change in 

[134] 



FORCES 

his relations to forces which he could now not 
only adjust himself to, but utilize; and which, more- 
over, made him conscious of a new Force, to which 
he could sustain both these relations. 

"To trace the steps of this development, how- 
ever, or to formulate a theory concerning the way 
in which this last and most important step was 
taken, is an entirely different thing from recogniz- 
ing the facts of man's present relations with the 
Universe. We can recognize that the facts are 
such as I have described, without understanding 
them sufficiently to be able to formulate a theory 
with regard to the way in which man arrived at 
his present position. Our ignorance on this latter 
point in no wise prevents us from recognizing 
these facts, or from entering into such relations 
with the Universe as are fitting, in view of their 
being what they are. 

"And that man does possess the power, not 
only to adjust himself to, but also to utilize forces, 
is a fact which needs no proof — at least, so far as 
physical forces are concerned. 

"The tremendous change which occurs in the 
relations of every individual to the Universe 
when he passes from childhood to manhood; the 
difference between the painful efforts of the child 
to conform its motions to the law of gravitation, 
and the acts of the man, who not only has com- 
pleted that adjustment, but uses that force to 
grind his corn and spin his cotton; the difference 
between the child who painfully learns that fire 
burns and steam scalds, and the man who, a few 
years later, uses fire and steam to carry him round 

[135] 



FORCES 

the world, — is sufficiently obvious, and renders 
proof unnecessary. Nor is there any need to 
point out the forms in which these two classes 
of relations manifest themselves in the region of 
mind. Instinct in some cases may so nearly 
approach to reason as to render distinction difficult, 
but the difference between the highest manifesta- 
tions of instinct in the lower animals (or even be- 
tween the thoughts of a child), and the intellectual 
attainments of a Newton, is evidently so enormous, 
and, in the latter case, points so clearly to a distinct 
kind of control over this power, from that which 
exists in the former, that no evidence for the reality 
of the distinction need be adduced.* 

"The fact, however, that we can sustain rela- 
tions of both kinds to the Spiritual Force has been 
by no means universally acknowledged; indeed, 
very few have recognized the possibility of accom- 
plishing more than an imperfect adjustment to this 
Force; they have never got beyond the period of 
childhood in their relations with it; of utilizing it 
they have never dreamed. Nevertheless, not only 
have we ample evidence in history that there have 
been men — wise men, prophets, seers, saints (the 

* The following note was evidently intended to supple- 
ment the above paragraph. It is written across the page 
of the MS., and I have deciphered it with difficult}' : — "Of 
course, I do not place the manifestations of mind in chil- 
dren on the same level with even the highest manifesta- 
tions of instinct in the lower animals, but far higher; but 
in reference to the point I am considering — the utiliza- 
tion of mind force as contrasted with the life of mere 
adjustment to it — they may, I think, be fairly classed 
together as coming under the latter head." 

[136] 



FORCES 

world has called them by many names) — who have 
attained to higher and closer relations with the 
Spiritual Force, — relations which have lifted them 
above the level of ordinary humanity, and given 
them higher power and nobler Life; but language 
itself bears witness to the fact that it is possible for 
man to sustain to this Force, not only the lower 
relation of adjustment, but also the higher one of 
utilization. What other distinction than this is 
that which is conveyed by the terms 'morality,' and 
'religion'? What other distinction than this is it 
which exists between Jesus' Gospel of Sonship, and 
the obedience to 'Law' of Judaism, — the funda- 
mental distinction between Mosaism and Christi- 
anity, the Old Testament and the New, contrasted 
again and again by the Apostle Paul in such terms 
as 'Law' and 'Gospel,' 'Slavery' and 'Freedom,' 
'Childhood' and 'Manhood,' 'Fear' and 'Love'? 

"Yes, in the language in which from age to 
age for countless generations man has been storing 
up a record of his continually enlarging experience 
of the Universe, we find conclusive evidence of the 
fact that in all ages, and among all nations, but 
especially among the Hebrews, and preeminently 
in that age when the crown and flower of that 
gifted nation gave expression to those truths, which 
the world ever since has acknowledged to be the 
highest and grandest truths of life — in all ages, and 
among all nations, men (at least, some men) have 
recognized that higher relations can be sustained 
by man to that Spiritual Force of which they are 
conscious, than those of mere obedience to such of 
its laws as are embodied in morality — that partial 

[137] 



r 



FORCES 

and unwilling obedience to the imperatives of con- 
science which is all that most men accord — rela- 
tions which consist, not in adjustments to it, but in 
graspings of it, and communings with it, which, 
indeed, thought cannot fully conceive of, nor lan- 
guage adequately describe, but which fill the heart 
with peace and joy, and bring the consciousness of 
rapturous Life. 

"However far the majority of men may have 
been from completing (or even attempting to com- 
plete) so much as their adjustment to the Spiritual 
Force, as it has made itself known to them through 
the imperatives of the Moral Law, the indisputable 
fact remains that some have sustained a different 
relation to it than that of mere obedience to even 
the highest code of morality — that they have 
touched a higher Life. 

"With the exception of One, they have, indeed, 
hardly been less conscious of their failure to com- 
pletely correspond with it than other men; but the 
world has not failed to recognize that this was 
owing to the clearness of their apprehension of its 
awful strength and infinite perfection, which they 
apprehended, indeed, but strove (in vain, as it 
seemed to them) to comprehend. That, however, 
they did not wholly strive in vain is plainly to be 
seen when we contrast their lives with the lives of 
the majority of men; and the world has acknow- 
ledged their superiority by enrolling their names in 
the record of its noblest and best. 

"They are to be found by all who seek for them 
in the pages of history ; and the secret of their lives 
may be discovered by all who diligently search for 

[138] 



FORCES 

it; and let doubters and sceptics sneer as they may, 
the conviction which every earnest seeker after truth 
will carry away with him from the study of their 
lives can never fail to be — 

'I cannot hide that some have striven, 
Achieving calm, to whom was given 
The joy that mixes man with Heaven.' 

"Now, though I do not deny that there are not 
wanting indications that some men before the 
Christian era, especially some of the Old Testament 
writers, had advanced beyond the life of mere 
adjustment to the Spiritual Force to the higher and 
more satisfying life of correspondence with it (as, 
for instance, the man who sang, 'I delight to do Thy 
will, O my God'), yet none the less is it true that the 
characteristic feature of the 'Old Dispensation,' as 
it has been called, is that of adjustment simply. 

"The devout Hebrew obeyed the will of Jehovah 
just as it was revealed to him in the Law; often, 
indeed, finding great satisfaction in so doing, but 
seldom penetrating to the principle which underlay 
it ; seldom touching that life of intelligent and will- 
ing obedience to the Eternal, which He who came 
to fulfil the Law and the Prophets was the first to 
proclaim fully and to live. 

"For many centuries, indeed, the Hebrew failed 
to make a clear distinction between the relative 
value of obedience to the moral part of the code of 
Law which he accepted as giving expression to the 
Divine Will, and the ceremonial observances with 
which it was associated. It was not till the nation 
had passed its prime that the overwhelming import- 

[139] 



FORCES 

ance of the former was recognized, and men were 
found who were bold enough to discount the im- 
portance — and even to deny the necessity — of the 
latter.* 

"Moreover, those who did apprehend the grand 
truth which the Founder of Christianity was the 
first to fully unfold, and has been the only One to 
fully embody in life, — even these came very far 
short of a full and clear apprehension of it. This 
arose from the fact that they only imperfectly 
understood the real nature and character of the 
Spiritual Force They apprehended it as just, right- 
eous, and merciful, and in their best moments drew 
a comparison between it and some of the character- 
istics which distinguish the parental relationship. 
Jesus comprehended it as Love, and regarded it as 
the antitype of all fatherhood. 'When ye pray say, 
"Father" ' — a vast step, that, in advance of any 
conceptions of the Spiritual Force which any of 
the Old Testament writers had. 

"For these reasons, therefore,! the Hebrews 
could not solve the problem which so perplexed 
them. 

"Their ignorance of the truth of immortality 
prevented them from extending the compensations 
of the Universe beyond the present life. Their 

* Cf. Ps. xl. 8; xix. 7-11; xl. 6; li. 16, 17; Isa. ii. n-17; 
Ps. ciii. 13; Isa. xlix. 15. 

t The reader will observe that my friend has diverged, 
in the last few pages, from the main line of thought which 
he has been following, in order to dwell on the distinction 
which he draws between "adjustment" to forces and their 

[140] 



FORCES 

failure to distinguish between the different kinds 
of results which follow from correspondence with 
the various orders of forces, led them to expect 
material results to follow on obedience to spiritual 
laws. And their imperfect apprehension of the 
nature and character of the Spiritual Force, together 
with the fact that very few of them had advanced 
beyond the life of adjustment to its laws, rendered 
it impossible for them to fully realize that higher 
Life of correspondence with it which Jesus unfolded 
— its transcendent worth, and its satisfying sweet- 
ness. 

"For something more than mere adjustment to 
forces, whether material or spiritual, man requires 
in order to find satisfaction for the wants of his 
nature. This is true of his relations with all forces, 
but it is most true of his relations with the Spiritual 
Force. 

"Obedience to the Moral Law, regarded simply 
as Law, can never bring with it a satisfying delight. 
Virtue is not its own reward. The satisfaction to 
be derived from conformity to the rules of morality 
can never fully compensate for the trials and losses 
which such conformity entails. Man requires, not 
merely to conform to the forces around him (i.e. 

"utilization." He now returns to the point from which he 
wandered — the reason why the Hebrews who "grappled 
with the problem" (why Jehovah permitted the wicked to 
prosper) could not determine "the relative worth and sat- 
isfyingness of the lives which result from correspondence 
with the various classes of forces" which he has dis- 
tinguished. 

[141] 



FORCES 

to exist), he requires to apprehend and utilize them 
(i.e. to live). Life alone is the goal of existence; 
and the final, endless end is that Life which can 
be won by entering into correspondence with the 
highest (i.e. the Spiritual) Force. 

"This the Hebrew did not, indeed, could not 
know, for the world was not then in possession of 
the secret. He only tasted the lesser joys which 
follow from conformity to Law ; he hardly touched 
the higher ones which accompany Life. 

"Consequently, he could not rest contented while 
seeing the wicked prosper, feeling that he was in 
possession of a greater prosperity and a fuller life. 
He perplexed his mind with the hopeless problem, 
why the Eternal permitted such a state of things, 
and again and again lifted up his passionate cry 
for justice to the God who all along was just. 

"But the centuries which have elapsed since the 
Book of Job and the Psalms were written have 
added much to our knowledge of the forces in the 
midst of whose energizing we find ourselves — of 
the Spiritual Force as well as of physical ones; 
and we can now grapple successfully with the prob- 
lem which baffled them ; for us, indeed, it has ceased 
to be a problem. 

"For we know now — thanks to Him whose high 
claim to complete knowledge of, and full corre- 
spondence with, the Spiritual Force, the moving 
centuries have continually endorsed more and more 
fully — that we cannot only conform to its laws, 
but can apprehend it and correspond with it; and, 
by utilizing the mighty current of its ever-flowing 
stream, can attain to unimaginable fulness of end- 

[142] 



FORCES 

less Life. We know now — or we may know, by 
learning to know and to love the Divine Teacher 
of Nazareth — that the Spiritual Force is the force 
of a living Spirit; whose touch to responsive souls 
is as the touch of a Father's hand; who rewards 
even the feeblest efforts of our spirits to apprehend 
and commune with Him with sweet draughts from 
the river of His pleasures — with Life from the 
fountain of His Eternal Life; who satisfies our 
heart's deepest need by permitting us to share in 
the fellowship of His Love. 

"Why this Spiritual Force flows, and from what 
Source, and why it is what it is, we do not know. 
We cannot even hazard a conjecture, any more than 
we can conjecture how physical forces originated. 
We know concerning the latter that, at least as far 
as their manifestations in the material universe are 
concerned, they are transient and not destined to 
endure ; of the former we know nothing beyond the 
records of the various ways in which it has laid 
its touch on human souls, and has manifested its 
presence and its power in human history. 

"But the man who has linked himself to it will 
not disturb himself with such speculations. The 
fulness and satisfyingness of the life of correspond- 
ence with it which he will feel to be his will leave 
no room for doubt — no room for any other desire 
than the desire to share more fully in its inexhausti- 
ble fulness of Life. He will feel that it is the most 
fundamental force of which he has any conscious- 
ness, and that by correspondence with it he satisfies 
the most fundamental needs of his nature. He will 
feel that he is in communion with Life, which is 

[143] 



FORCES 

above — and which lifts him above— all the muta- 
tions of time ; which indeed knows nothing of time, 
but changelessly, eternally is. 

"And so, for the man who stands there, the 
problem concerning the prosperity of the wicked, 
which so perplexed the minds of the Hebrew 
thinkers, is no insoluble riddle; indeed, it does not 
present itself to his mind as a problem at all. He 
feels and knows, by daily and hourly experience — 
as they, who had hardly got beyond the life of 
adjustment to it, and who had not grasped the full 
truth concerning what it is, could not know and 
feel — the superiority and satisfying sweetness of 
the life of correspondence with the Spiritual Force. 
He can look with complaisance — nay, not complais- 
ance, but with pity, and a longing desire to lift them 
from their low enjoyments, their meagre existence, 
their fancied prosperity, their blind contentment, 
to his own full, rapturous life, — he can look thus 
on those who, ignoring the Spiritual Force, suc- 
ceed in their schemes of worldly ambition, and get 
for themselves fame and wealth. They set this 
end before themselves, and they attain to it, but — 
he realizes — at a fearful cost. For not only do 
they miss all the joys of the Eternal Life, but, by 
thus striving for ends which are not final, they 
build on a foundation which will not endure, but 
will crumble beneath them when, by the change of 
death, they are torn away from all that they prize, 
and are swept into a new and strange environment. 
There, too, he knows that they will encounter the 
Spiritual Force, and will have to face its dread 
recoil sweeping back upon them with aggravated 

[144] 



FORCES 

intensity from the hindrances to its flow which their 
unrighteous lives have caused. And he knows that, 
if true, Eternal Life is to be theirs, it can only 
be by their patiently submitting to see all the results, 
which they have so earnestly striven to achieve, 
swept away by the avenging Nemesis of this resist- 
less Force ; by painfully remodelling their lives so 
as to offer no further resistance to its sweep; and 
by entering into that correspondence with it which 
can alone satisfy all the requirements of their na- 
ture, and all its purpose of infinite beneficience. 
Whether they will achieve this mighty reformation 
he knows not, though believing — knowing — that 
the fundamental quality of the Spiritual Force is 
Love, he can follow them into the unseen world, 
with the solemn hope that they go to that — 

' . . . dark, obscure, sequestered place, 
Where God unmakes but to remake the soul. 
Which else were made in vain.' " 

Among the same manuscripts as those which 
contain the above I find the following, which, from 
its position, as well as its tenour, I conclude my 
friend intended to be a supplement or comment on 
it. Apparently he wrote it after reading over the 
above essay. It is worthy of the reader's careful 
attention, for it forms a link between the notes I 
have already given and those which follow. It 
shows (as I hinted at the commencement of this 
chapter) that the more he thought and wrote on 
religious subjects the more he became convinced 
of the inadequacy of scientific terminology to ex- 
press the truths with which religion deals. After 

[145] 



FORCES 

reading it we shall not be surprised to find that he 
resorts more and more to the relations which exist 
between — and are peculiar to — human beings for 
illustrations of the relations which exist between 
the "Spiritual Force" and man; and uses, in his 
descriptions of the "Life" which results from "cor- 
respondence with the Spiritual Environment," the 
terms which are exclusively used to describe the 
feelings, emotions, and affections which are exper- 
ienced in intercourse between man and man : — 

"The astonishing progress which science has 
made during the present century, and the important 
part it has played in moulding the life of the age, 
has naturally had a great influence on men's 
thoughts and conceptions of life. There has been 
a strong tendency to modify these so as to bring 
them as far as possible into harmony with the new 
knowledge which science has gained. And in some 
cases men have been led by the momentum of 
thought, produced by years of scientific research, 
to attempt to describe and define all life in terms 
of science, and have confined themselves (as far as 
possible, for it is not altogether possible) to the 
nomenclature which it adopts, and to such analogies 
and illustrations as are found in the peculiar field 
in which it works. This is not altogether to be 
regretted; indeed, if scientists took a complete view 
of Nature (in which human nature should be in- 
cluded) and of Life, it could not fail to be produc- 
tive of unmixed good. 

"But this hitherto has not been the case. Human 
nature on its deepest side — Life in those deeper 
regions of consciousness which have been stirred 

[i 4 6] 



FORCES 

in at least some men — has not yet been worthily 
studied by scientists. 

"Material phenomena have almost exclusively 
engaged their attention; they have hardly conde- 
scended to notice those most varied and most subtle 
phenomena which are connected with religion. 

"I do not doubt that a thorough scientific inves- 
tigation of the religious experiences of the race — 
not merely its beliefs and practices, but its exper- 
iences — will lead to a profound modification of the 
present attitude. of science towards religion. 

"But this fact must never be forgotten when 
we consider the relation of science to religion, and 
the attempt to define Life in terms of science : 
phenomena alone come legitimately within the 
sphere of science; with phenomena alone are the 
faculties of which science makes use, capable of 
dealing. 

"But phenomena are the appearances of a Some- 
thing, and faculties are the faculties of a Some- 
thing — which underlies them, but is not they. 
What this Something is science can never know. 
It is beyond the power of faculties to apprehend, 
it is beyond the range of scientific instruments to 
discover, it is beyond the capacity of scientific term- 
inology to define, what the Real, the Spiritual — 
whether it be in man or in the Universe — is. The 
door of the Real is for ever shut to science. 
Science can only deal with what appears; and can 
only describe it in terms of the faculties of which 
phenomena alone are the proper environment, and 
with which alone they are capable of corresponding. 

"This being so, it follows that all attempts to 

[147] 



FORCES 

describe and define Life in terms of science, — all 
attempts to comprehend under scientific methods, 
and to set forth in scientific language (in a way 
which can be deemed satisfactory) that which men 
know and feel Life to be, must be impossible. 

"It is the boldest of presumptions, the most out- 
rageous of claims, made in defiance of what is 
highest and noblest in human nature, to assume that 
those faculties in man which correspond with 
phenomena, are adequate to guage and measure 
Life and Truth. 

"The inadequacy of scientific terminology to 
express the deepest and most fundamental truths 
and relations of Life only became fully apparent 
to me when I made the attempt to express religious 
truths in these terms. I then found it quite impos- 
sible to confine my language to them ; they were 
too cold, hard, heartless; and I rose from the 
attempt, convinced that we must make use of the 
terms which describe human relations, and the 
illustrations and analogies which these supply, in 
order to adequately express those relations between 
man and the Non-Ego which are included under 
the term 'Religion.' 

"I do not object to the use of scientific termi- 
nology as far as it is possible to make use of it. 
Indeed, to reclothe religious truths in such lan- 
guage may be very helpful to some, and may serve 
a useful purpose in many cases by shaking people 
out of ruts, and making the truths they profess to 
hold more real to them. But I do not believe that, 
in the main, the old way of expressing religious 
truths can be improved on. The age needs to free 

[148] 



FORCES 

itself from the bias towards materialism which it 
has undoubtedly- acquired, and to correct the ten- 
dency to look at everything in the 'dry light' of 
science. In order to express adequately those fund- 
amental spiritual relations which man is capable of 
sustaining with the Universe, a return must be 
made to the terminology which has the sanction of 
the ages; a terminology which, while it does not 
refuse assistance from nature, and material things, 
and man's relations to them, gets its chief expres- 
sions and draws its truest analogies from the rela- 
tions which are only possible between personalities 
— between soul and soul, heart and heart. 

"The beauty and the sweetness of these rela- 
tions, and their possibilities, the world will doubt- 
less apprehend with increasing fulness as its devel- 
opment progresses, and man enters more and more 
into his birthright. And as this advance is made 
the words expressive of these relations, and the 
analogies drawn from them, will gain a greater 
depth and fulness of meaning. But though by 
this means the terminology of which countless gen- 
erations have approved as the most fitting in which 
to express these relations which their spirits can 
sustain to the Great Spirit will undergo modifica- 
tion, I do not think it possible for any new relations 
to be discovered through the aid of science, which, 
because they more adequately express man's funda- 
mental relations with the Non-Ego, will supersede 
the relations of father and son, husband and wife, 
the lover and the loved one. 

"Therefore, not 'Force' and 'Law,' but 'Father' 
and 'Love,' must ever remain the truest and the 

[149] 



FORCES 

most satisfactory terms in which to describe Him 
who has created us, and in whose presence we for 
ever stand; Him before whose inexhaustible power, 
matchless wisdom, and awful beauty, as these are 
revealed in Nature — our senses are wearied and our 
minds are filled with speechless wonder; yet are 
we not therewith satisfied. For that which is deep- 
est in us — the soul — cannot be fed with beauty; 
nor satisfied with the contemplation — or even with 
the appropriation — of the unsearchable wisdom and 
power of the Eternal. It craves for a deeper 
knowledge, it longs for a fuller communion, than 
the senses can win or than Nature can give. Only 
when it has realized that the touch of that which 
is around it is the touch of a Father's Hand is it 
soothed into restfulness; only when it has found 
that God is Love can it enter into that fulness of 
Life which it craves to have and He to bestow." 



[150] 



CHAPTER V 



RELIGION 



The number and the length of the notes which I 
have found among my friend's manuscripts dealing 
with the subject of religion shows how often his 
mind dwelt on this subject. It was, indeed, as will 
have been gathered from the letter which I have 
inserted in the Introduction, the subject which 
chiefly occupied his attention, with a view to writ- 
ing on which in a connected form he penned the 
majority of these notes. 

From such a wealth of material it has been dif- 
ficult to make a selection. I have felt compelled to 
omit many interesting notes, and to confine myself 
to those which seem most in accord with the aim I 
have endeavoured to keep before me in this work. 

I have been helped by finding three long notes 
(they might almost be called essays) on Faith, 
The New Birth, and The Moral Sense. His most 
suggestive thoughts, and his main conclusions on 
religion are, I think, to be found in these. I have 
accordingly embodied them in this and in the two 
following chapters; and, to give the reader as 
complete an idea as is possible of the views he 
adopted on these subjects, I have added a few notes 

[151] 



RELIGION 

which I have found elsewhere among the manu- 
scripts. 

A. Faith 

"All knowledge rests on faith. It is impossible 
to say 'I know/ without also saying, 'I trust.' 

"But knowledge is of two kinds — the results of 
the exercise of two different parts of our nature on 
two different modes of the real. 

"In the one case the knowledge is intellectual, 
gained by a trustful exercise of faculties on 
phenomena; in the other case it is spiritual, gained 
by the correspondence of spirit with substance. 
The one cognizes things, the other persons. Our 
life as intellectual beings is comprised in the one, 
our life as self-conscious and responsible beings in 
the other. And as the character of the knowledge 
is different in the two cases, so is also the character 
of the faith on which each rests. Both are necessi- 
tated, but the necessity is not of the same kind. 
The possession of self-determination makes a dif- 
ference in the character "of the necessity which be- 
longs to the Spiritual Faith. We cannot think at 
all without resting on the postulates of our intel- 
lectual knowledge; we can live — only not truly — 
without exercising the spiritual faith." 

[Across the page my friend has written, appa- 
rently after reading over this sentence: "And yet 
I do not know that there is any essential difference 
in the character of the necessity which attaches 
to these faiths. We can no more live the spiritual 
life without exercising the spiritual faith than 
we can think without resting on the intellectual 

[152] 



RELIGION 

one. What makes it appear as if the necessity- 
were different is that men think they are living 
when they have not got {i. e. do not exercise) the 
spiritual faith. They call it 'life,' this existence 
which is all they know about; but it does not de- 
serve the name. They are dead to true Life, and 
don't know it."] 

"The necessity of both these faiths results from 
our finiteness. It is impossible to conceive of any 
other basis on which the thinking and living of 
finite intelligent spirits could be based. 

"As finite intelligences, we must sooner or later 
come to the walls which circumscribe our minds, 
to the limits of thought, to the primary notions 
which permit of no analysis. As finite spirits, 
we must lean on the Infinite Spirit, else were we 
gods. 

"I cannot see that in this necessity there is any- 
thing derogatory to human nature — unless, indeed, 
finiteness itself be a humiliation. Humility, which 
alone is a fitting posture for the finite to assume in 
the presence of the Infinite, should lead us quietly 
to accept and joyfully to live by these conditions, 
which, had they not been good, the Infinite Wisdom 
and Love would not have imposed. It is only the 
pride and wilfulness of ignorance which refuses to 
stoop to pass through this, the one gate by which 
alone man can enter into Life. 

"But though necessity, resulting from our finite- 
ness, is a characteristic of both the intellectual and 
the spiritual faith, there are features in which they 
differ quite as important as this in which they agree. 

"For the intellectual faith is a necessity which 

[153] 



RELIGION 

belongs to the organ of thought, mechanical, acted 
upon, whether recognized or not — the silent, incon- 
trovertible testimony of our minds concerning the 
limits of their capacity." 

[In brackets my friend writes: "I have often 
wondered at, and endeavoured (unsuccessfully) to 
explain, the curious fact that the mind has the 
power to question the validity and universality of 
its own a priori notions. Why is it possible to 
question whether 2+2=4 universally? Is it the 
protest of the spirit against the narrowness of the 
limits within which it is at present confined ?"■] 

"But the spiritual faith is not mechanical, but 
vital. It pertains not to the organ of thought, but 
to the personality; not to what man has, but to 
what he is. 

"And as it inheres in a nobler part of man's 
nature than the intellectual faith, so are the objects 
upon which it exercises itself proportionally nobler. 

"The spiritual faith does not rest on intuitions, 
it reposes on living spirits. It is essentially a rela- 
tionship between personalities, and only between 
persons can it be displayed. 

"If living souls are absent, or if the spirit is not 
conscious of the presence of the Eternal Spirit, the 
spiritual faith cannot manifest itself. But granted 
these conditions, it can energize, and, in energizing, 
afford a basis for a Life (i. e. a correspondence) 
as boundless as its object, — as limitless as the capaci- 
ties of the soul towards which it leans. 

"The Eternal Spirit — God — is the only object on 
which the spiritual faith can ultimately rest. For 
this side of our nature opens out on the Infinite, and 

[154] 



RELIGION 

no finite personality, but only the Great Personality, 
can meet and satisfy the boundless capacities of the 
spiritual faith, and the measureless ambition of the 
spirit of man. 

"Therefore, though for a time it may rest on, 
and content itself with, those imperfect types of the 
Eternal Spirit which it has relations with in the 
world, it is bound, sooner or later, to discover their 
insufficiency. God alone can satisfy the capacities 
and the needs of man. 

"The spiritual faith cannot be described. It 
is an unique affection of personality, a primary 
spiritual instinct. It pertains to deep regions of 
our being, which thought is not competent to 
fathom, and consequently it defies all attempts to 
formulate it in mental terms. Hence to apply to 
it the terms 'affection/ 'instinct,' or 'feeling,' is 
alike unsatisfactory, for none of these, nor all 
combined, convey an adequate impression of what 
it is. It is more an attitude of the Ego — the lean- 
ing touch of our spirits on the Real — the nestling 
of the finite on the bosom of the Infinite. At the 
same time, the term 'faculty' may be applied to it 
with propriety, inasmuch as through it we gain the 
most fundamental knowledge which we are capable 
of apprehending — the knowledge of God. 

"Indeed, though I have called it 'that upon 
which spiritual knowledge rests,' it contains in it- 
self many of the elements of real knowledge. In 
these deep regions thought must be content with 
very imperfect definitions. 

"Therefore, though it is idle to dispute about 
terminology, and I would gladly surrender the 

[155] 



RELIGION 

term 'knowledge' as expressive of this spiritual ex- 
perience to any one who can furnish me with a bet- 
ter one, I think the term can fairly be applied to the 
spiritual faith. 

"For through it we cognize not merely a fixed 
relation existing between faculties and phenomena — 
an order and harmony in these capable of being 
co-ordinated to an indefinite extent with the order 
and harmony in those (and this is the best defini- 
tion I can give of intellectual knowledge), but we 
recognize a harmony existing between our spirits 
and the Infinite Spirit, we are conscious of spirit 
knowing Spirit, Life touching Life, in a way and 
with a fulness and satisfyingness which our spirits 
can, indeed, experience, but our intellects can never 
formulate. 

"And the recognition of this unique relation- 
ship is accompanied by feelings — by 'knowledge 
— equally unique : by a feeling of restful confidence 
at all times, in all places, and amid all the changing 
circumstances of life ; by a feeling of peace and joy 
which continually becomes greater as experience 
confirms and justifies this primary instinct of our 
spirits ; by a conviction of being in harmony with 
the Heart of things which no mental doubts can 
shake, and no pain, or sorrow, or adversity can 
disturb. 

"No one who has had these 'feelings' will care 
to dispute about the words in which thought en- 
deavours to give expression to them. He will 
recognize the total inadequacy of language to ex- 
press the fact which he feels and knows. He will 
feel how poor is all mental imagery to represent this 

[156] 



RELIGION 

spiritual experience. It cannot be described : to be 
realized it must be spiritually felt. 

"There are, indeed, feelings experienced in the 
relations which men sustain to one another which, 
inasmuch as they are common to humanity, and 
are never wholly unknown even to the most debased 
and degraded of men, can be pointed to as typifying 
the feelings experienced by those who have attained 
to the spirtiual faith. (I mean that spiritual faith 
which has made touch with that only Object with 
which it can have a satisfying correspondence — i. e. 
the Infinite Spirit, God.) 

"And seeing that in all languages there are 
words which express these feelings — words which 
convey adequate impressions because they are the 
universally received mental equivalents of these uni- 
versally experienced feelings — the mind can, by the 
use of these, to some extent, describe that higher 
spiritual experience, and convey some notion of it 
to others. 

"But these feelings cannot be regarded as any- 
thing but types and shadows of those which are 
experienced by the man who leans on the Eternal 
with a living spiritual faith. Sweet and rich in 
joy as they are when most fully experienced, they, 
resulting as they do from relations with what is 
limited and imperfect, cannot convey any adequate 
idea of experiences which result from relations with 
the Unlimited and Perfect: the reality cannot be 
known until it has been actually experienced. 

"This difficulty of conveying through language 
adequate impressions of the spiritual truths she 
taught and of the spiritual life she revealed, was 

[157] 



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one which Christianity encountered. And it is a 
difficulty which, so far as I can see, could not have 
been overcome had not He who first taught these 
truths lived them as well, so that He not only taught 
the Truth, but was the Truth ; not only taught men 
what Life — true Life — is, but zvas the Life, and 
thus enabled them to realize and know what would 
otherwise have been unrealizable and beyond 
knowledge because beyond the range of experience. 
It is a difficulty which the Apostle Paul felt when 
writing about Christianity, and which led him to 
quote the passage as applying to spiritual experience : 
'things which eye saw not, and ear heard not, and 
which entered not into the heart of man; things 
which God prepared for those who love Him ;' and 
to say, 'the natural man receiveth not the things of 
the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him, 
and he cannot know them, because they are spirit- 
ually apprehended ;' and again and again to exhaust 
language in the endeavour to convey in words ade- 
quate impressions of what he, in a way which no 
words would describe, felt and experienced as a 
living reality. 

"To many, indeed, the language of the Apostle, 
which I have just quoted, and perhaps my own 
language in speaking of the spiritual faith, may 
seem to savour of pride and dogmatism. They 
certainly will not be readily accepted by that large 
class of men who are barely, if at all, conscious of 
spiritual need, who do not know what soul-hunger 
is. 

" 'What/ they will say, 'is this spiritual experi- 
ence of which you talk? We have never experi- 

[158] 



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enced it; we have never had any consciousness of a 
spiritual faith. What right have you to imply that 
our being is defective when we feel no sense of 
defect, to say we are dead when we are conscious of 
being so much alive?' * 

"With such men argument is useless. As long 
as they remain in this state of mind the heights 
of life, which, by the exercise of spiritual faith they 
can gain, must be for ever beyond their reach, ana 
they must continue to regard them as unsubstantial 
and visionary. 

"For, indeed, to them they are so. What they 
say is true; they never have seen these heights; 
they have been unconscious of their existence. 
However much it may lay one open to the charge 
of presumption to say so, it must be said, because 
it is the truth, that spiritually they are blind and 
dead. They do not exercise their spiritual faculties, 
and consequently the spiritual world is as com- 
pletely cut off from them as the intellectual world 
would be if they absolutely refused to trust the 
a priori notions of the mind; and no words will 
convince them of its existence, or convey to them 
any notion of the Life which results from corre- 
spondence with it, if they do not exercise those 
faculties through which alone they can gain 'know- 
ledge' of it. 

"Such men miss Life; they are without that 
supreme, ineffable consciousness to which some 
have attained, to which all may, yes, I believe, all 
shall, attain finally — the consciousness of quietly 
trustfully resting on that Eternal Life which is also 
the Eternal Love. 

[iS9] 



RELIGION 

"And here a question suggests itself which is 
one of extreme interest, but also one of consider- 
able difficulty — the question of the relations that 
exist between the spiritual faith and the intellectual 
faculties. 

"I fully agree with Sir Wm. Hamilton in his 
statement that 'the capacity of thought is not to be 
constituted into the measure of existence, nor the 
domain of our knowledge recognized as necessarily 
coextensive with the horizon of our faith ;' and 
the truth of this statement, and of what I have 
been saying about the inadequacy of thought to 
express those states of consciousness which ac- 
company a spiritual faith, receives abundant con- 
firmation, not only from that Book which embodies 
the highest spiritual experience to which any of 
our race have attained, but also from the language 
of the men who in every age have felt most deeply 
and truly. 

Wordsworth sings — 

" 'In such high hour 

Of visitation from the Living God 
Thought was not;' 

and Tennyson — 

" 'If e'er when Faith had fall'n asleep, 
I heard a voice, "Believe no more," 
And heard an ever-breaking shore 
That tumbled in the Godless deep: 

" 'A warmth within the heart would melt 
The freezing reason's colder part, 
And like a man in wrath the heart 
Stood up and answered, "I have felt." ' 

[160] 



RELIGION 

"These are two very significant restatements of a 
truth which, though the saints and seers of every 
age have not failed to give utterance to it, had, and 
has still, great need to be reasserted in this age, in 
bold contradiction to the extravagant claims which 
the mind is making anew, of universal sovereignty 
over the whole being of man, and over the whole 
Universe without him. 

"But it is one thing to recognize and feel con- 
vinced of man's capability to sustain relations with 
the Non-Ego deeper and more fundamental than 
those which legitimately form the subject of mental 
cognition, and which can be adequately expressed 
in terms of thought, and quite another to be able 
to determine the relations which exist between 
this deeper consciousness and the organ of intelli- 
gence, and in terms of the latter to describe them. 
A satisfactory philosophy of the religious con- 
sciousness it is impossible to construct, for by 
'satisfactory philosophy' we mean an analysis and 
description of it which satisfies the mind, which, as 
I have already said, is not capable of comprehend- 
ing and adequately expressing this affection of 
man's being, even when it forms the subject of per- 
sonal experience, and is totally unable to realize 
what it is when the being has never been thus af- 
fected. 

"Nevertheless, it should not be impossible to gain 
some conception both of the religious consciousness 
and of its relation to the organ of thought. At any 
rate, in endeavouring to do so we are only yielding 
to a natural impulse; indeed, we are compeUed to 
make the attempt. For though thought may not be 

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able to 'measure existence,' it is the only line we can 
throw into the depths; though there are affections 
of consciousness which take place below the horizon 
line of cognizable knowledge, their effects are 
visible above the horizon; though the mind cannot 
comprehend this consciousness, it can apprehend it, 
— and, indeed, is bound to apprehend it, inasmuch 
as all affections of consciousness report themselves 
to the mind and form the subjects of cognitions: 
they pass into it, and shape themselves in it — or 
rather are transmuted " by it — into thought-forms. 
However inadequate the organ of thought may be 
for the task of gauging consciousness and measur- 
ing 'the Real,' it is the only instrument with which 
we have been furnished for that purpose. There- 
fore, the attempt to form conceptions of the re- 
ligious consciousness is a perfectly legitimate one, 
and we can make it without, on the one hand, fall- 
ing into the error of supposing that the intellect is 
master of the spirit, and can comprehend it, and 
without, on the other hand, entangling ourselves in 
the errors of mysticism — mysticism which practi- 
cally refuses to recognize the intellect's capacity to 
apprehend the affections of the spirit; a refusal 
which contains a noble assertion of the spirit's su- 
periority, but which involves an undue depreciation 
of that organ of intelligence with which the spirit of 
man has been endowed, and by which it is con- 
ditioned. 

"I have previously stated that there are feelings 
common to humanity, experienced in the relations 
which men sustain to one another, which approach 
nearest to, and will best serve as types of, the feel- 

[162] 



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ings experienced by those who have attained to the 
spiritual faith; and that in all languages there are 
words which describe these, and convey an intelli- 
gent meaning, because they are the mental equiva- 
lents of universally experienced feelings. 

"These feelings vary greatly in purity and in- 
tensity, and language has many words by which she 
describes them. In or behind all those which are 
recognized as noble and right, however, we find the 
primary attitude of trust — that unique, funda- 
mental affection which is the basis of all right rela- 
tions between personalities, which, whether you call 
it a feeling, or an attitude, or a knowledge, is a 
reality of conscious experience. 

"It would take me too far from my present line 
of thought to show that this is so in the case of all 
the feelings which men experience in their relations 
with one another on which the moral judgment can 
pass sentence of approval, such as esteem, honour, 
reverence, affection, love — that, indeed, trust is the 
only possible basis of intercourse between men. 
What I wish to point out now is that the very 
language which I have been obliged to use in de 7 
scribing these feelings, and the relation they bear to 
thought, discloses the difference which exists be- 
tween them as they are felt by the individual and as 
they are cognised by him. 

"They can only be cognized when they have 
previously been felt; we 'know' them first by 
experiencing them; we only recognize them when 
we shape them to the mind as thought. The true 
knowledge of them — the true life which we live 
when we experience them — is that which we have 

[163] 



RELIGION 

when we personally feel them; without this we 
should be incapable of shaping a single thought 
about them. 

"It is true that inasmuch as the mind is the 
organ of the spirit, and all communications between 
personalities have to be conducted through its med- 
ium, these feelings themselves cannot be experi- 
enced, nor these relations sustained, without its aid. 
But the intensity of these feelings bears no propor- 
tion whatever to the clearness or dimness with 
which they are cognized; no proportion to intel- 
lectual knowledge of the person who arouses them, 
and no proportion to intellectual culture or the 
reverse. In these relations between personalities 
the mind plays only a secondary and intermediate 
part to the feelings which are experienced — to the 
life which results. From spirit to spirit, through 
the minds of each, flashes the influence which is 
caused by and which produces whole universes of 
inexpressible emotion — of conscious life; just as 
through the passive wire is flashed the world-life 
of continents ; and a look, a gesture, or a word can 
convey depths of meaning which the mind could 
not express in a lifetime, and could not 'know' at all 
unless the spirit first experienced them. 

"What a wealth of affection, of faith, of love, 
have we not known in some hearts — known, and 
felt, and rested on, and delighted in — which re- 
vealed itself through the senses and intellect, indeed, 
but came from deep wells of being behind these, 
and stirred currents of life in us strong and deep 
out of all proportion to the cognitive value of the 
signs and words by which they were expressed! 

[i6 4 ] 



RELIGION 

What close bonds have we not seen or heard of, 
uniting life with life, heart with heart, productive 
of a wealth of joy and a fulness of communion 
which have needed no intellectual culture in order 
to be experienced, which have not required to be 
understood in order to be felt, which indeed those 
of the highest intellectual power have been the first 
to recognize and acknowledge as inexplicable and 
incomprehensible ! 

"These facts of conscious experience sufficiently 
demonstrate that there are affections of conscious- 
ness which, though they are manifested through 
cognitions, and, when felt, form legitimate subjects 
of contemplation for the mind, have a deeper 
source than the mind, and are of a different order 
from those affections of consciousness to which 
we ordinarily apply the term 'knowledge.' 

"They occur in deep regions of our being, which 
the light of the intellect cannot illumine; they per- 
tain to that central essence of man which philoso- 
phy can never define, which thought can never 
gauge, on the capabilities of which it is pre- 
sumptuous for the mind to pronounce an opin- 
ion. What depths it contains, what fulness of 
life it makes man conscious of when it is roused to 
activity, can be partially understood from those 
feelings (I use the word for want of a better one) 
which results from true relations between human 
beings — those sweet, sympathetic vibrations be- 
tween spirits consciously in harmony, when tone 
answers to tone, and chord to chord, through all 
the unfathomable depths of conscious life. But 
it was left for One to reveal all its grandeur, and all 

[165] 



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the infinite fulness of life to which the possession 
of it makes us heirs — One who proclaimed the good 
news that sonship with the Eternal is our birthright, 
and who in His own life showed us what that Life 
of Sonship is. 'Heirs of God, and joint heirs with 
Christ' — that alone adequately describes the capaci- 
ties of consciousness, that alone adequately defines 
the nobility of man ; though He who was the First- 
born still towers above all His brethren — matchless, 
our divinest symbol — the one Man who is worthy 
of the title 'Son of God.' 

"Now, what I have just said with regard to the 
part the mind plays in those most fundamental re- 
lations which men can have with one another, is 
equally true of the relations which they can sustain 
with the Eternal Spirit. In so far as a man has ex- 
perienced the sweetness of these human relations, 
to that extent is he supplied with a standard which 
he can employ to measure the heights and depths 
of the spiritual life. The words in which these re- 
lations are expressed will have a fulness of meaning 
proportionate to the fulness with which he has en- 
tered into the relations themselves. And inasmuch 
as, even in these human relations, the limits of the 
life which they produce can never be determined, 
and that which has been experienced stretches far 
beyond the limits of thought and of language; and 
seeing that, as I have already said, these can only 
be regarded as types of the relations which can be 
sustained with the Eternal Spirit, when a spiritual 
faith has been won, it is evident that it is impos- 
sible for the intellect to comprehend the spiritual 
consciousness. It can at best only partially appre- 

[166] 



RELIGION 

hend and imperfectly express in types and meta- 
phors those deep incomprehensible stirrings of 
consciousness which thrill the being of Him who 
'dwells in the secret place of the Most High,' who 
has entered into communion with the Infinite Love. 

"The world has an imperishable memorial of 
what language is capable of doing in this direction 
in the Psalms of the Hebrew nation — the Hebrew 
nation which (surely the fact is a very significant 
one) had no philosophy. The representations of 
spiritual experience which these contain are un- 
surpassable, or, at any rate, have never been sur- 
passed. A sufficient proof of their sublimity is to 
be found in the fact that the world for more than 
two thousand years has deemed them adequate for 
the expression of its spiritual feelings. Though 
in countless tones in every age, men have endeav- 
oured to express in language the music of their 
hearts, no fuller, sweeter, richer notes have ever 
been struck than those which were struck from the 
lyre of the Hebrew Psalmists ; men have continually 
returned to them, and ever found in them new 
depths of meaning corresponding to each new and 
deeper stirring of their own spiritual consciousness. 

"And yet who will be bold enough to say that 
the Psalms, unrivalled as they undoubtedly are as 
expressions of spiritual feeling, adequately express 
the soul-life of those who wrote them? What 
depths of inexpressible emotion lie behind these out- 
pourings! What fulness of spiritual life do they 
hint at, but leave undescribed ! And necessarily so ; 
for the notes of human speech tremble into silence 
long before the highest heights of feeling are 

[167] 



RELIGION 

reached, long before the fulness of the spiritual 
life can be expressed. Man's spirit and the Eternal 
Spirit meet and mingle in a fellowship and commun- 
ion too deep, too awful, for language to express or 
for thought to comprehend, — a communion of 
which silence is more expressive than speech, and 
the motionless lips than torrents of song.* 

"I have, in what I have written in the previous 
pages, been led to say more concerning the results 

* In Dr. Channing's discourse on "The Perfecting 
Power of Religion" there is a passage so singularly in 
harmony with the convictions my friend gave expression 
to in the above note, that I venture to quote it — 

"Again, I particularly intended to show that religion is 
a source of light to the intellect by opening to it the 
highest order of truths, and thus introducing it to a celes- 
tial happiness. On this topic it might not be easy to 
avoid the charge of mysticism. I believe, however, that 
the highest truths are not those which we learn from 
abroad. No outward teaching can bestow them. They 
are unfolded from within by our very progress in the re- 
ligious life. New ideas of perfection, new convictions of 
immortality, a new consciousness of God, a new perception 
of our spiritual nature, come to us as revelations, and open 
upon us with a splendour which belongs not to this world. 
Thus we gain the power to look with deeper penetration 
into human life, as well as into the universe. We read a 
wider significance into events. We attain to glimpses of 
the Infinite Mind and of a future world which, though we 
may not be able to define them in human speech, we yet 
know to correspond to realities. Now, this higher wis- 
dom, whereby the intellect anticipates the bright visions 
which await it in another life, comes only from the growth 
and dominant influence of the religious principle by which 
we become transformed more and more into the likeness 
of God."— Channing, "The Perfect Life." 

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RELIGION 

which follow on the possession of the spiritual faith 
— the outcome of it — than about the faith itself. 
And necessarily so. For if these results can be 
only imperfectly apprehended by the mind and 
expressed in language; if those deep emotions of 
the spirit which follow on the exercise of this 
primary spiritual instinct only send reflections 
above the horizon which bounds our intellectual 
knowledge, and defy all efforts of the Mind to bring 
them within the range of her direct vision, and to 
embody them in forms of thought, — much more 
must that on which these rest be beyond the power 
of the mind to understand, beyond the power of 
thought to conceive — a fact of conscious life defy- 
ing comprehension or analysis; mysterious, unde- 
finable, inscrutable. 

"That it has been a reality in the conscious expe- 
rience of some, the results which it has produced 
in our lives abundantly show. But the impossi- 
bility of arriving at satisfactory conceptions con- 
cerning even the faith which men daily exercise in 
their dealings with each other — that faith or trust 
without which intercourse and fellowship between 
man and man is impossible* — is sufficient to show 
the impossibility of comprehending what it is in its 
fulness, when the relationship is not between two 
finite beings, but between the spirit of man and the 
Infinite Spirit. 

"And yet we all 'know,' to some extent, at any 
rate, what that faith in man is, though we cannot 

* "Which, as I have said, lies at the back of all those 
relations which are recognized as noble and right— all on 
which the moral judgment can pass sentence of approval." 



[169] 



RELIGION 

explain it. For, consciously or unconsciously, it 
constitutes the basis of all our relations with one 
another ; and we all, though in very varying degrees, 
have a share in the life which is founded on it. And 
I think, if the matter is carefully investigated, it will 
be found that life has joy and peace and fulness ex- 
actly proportionate to the amount of faith which a 
man exercises. It is those who walk trustfully 
among their fellow-men who meet with the fullest 
sympathy from them, and have the fullest com- 
munion with them. It is those who share most 
fully in the joys and sorrows of others, who catch 
the deepest tones from their hearts — in a word, live 
the fullest life. Distrust and suspicion raise a wall 
of separation between a man and his fellows, and 
cut him off from the life which intercourse with 
them brings. \ 

"And though I have called this faith which we 
repose on one another only a type of the spiritual 
faith, because the one has relation to finite beings 
and the other to the Infinite Being, yet, as I have 
hinted before, in their nature they do not essentially 
differ. The possibilities of life which lie before the 
man who has attained to the latter must, of course, 
be infinitely greater than those which can be reached 
by the man who rests contented with the former. 
And not only life's possibilities, but also its security 
and changelessness. For human affections fail, and 
human hearts grow cold, and, even when they do 
not, cruel death or iron necessity often steps be- 
tween and leave the soul desolate and lonely, with a 
heart-hunger which seeks in vain for satisfaction 
throughout the whole range of created things. But 

[170] 



RELIGION 

the life which results from the spiritual faith is inca- 
pable of blight or diminution, and in undiminish- 
able sweetness endures through all the shocks of 
time, and passes unscathed through the portals of 
death. For it rests on what eternally, unchange- 
ably is — on the ultimate Fact of Facts, on that eter- 
nal 'Energy of Love,' which is the incomprehensible, 
unfathomable Source and Fountain of Life. 

"Nevertheless, though there is this immense dif- 
ference between the two in their outcome and re- 
sults, I am convinced that it is the same God-given 
capacity which reaches out to, and unites us with 
human hearts, and which reaches out to and links 
us with unseverable bonds to the Heart of the Eter- 
nal. And who can wonder that often the fulness 
of the life and the joy resulting from the exercise of 
this Divine faculty on finite beings blinds men to 
the higher life and higher bliss which result from 
its exercise on the Infinite One? Who can wonder 
that in a world so rich in possibilities of life so many 
men miss its deeper meanings, and strive to satisfy 
their infinite cravings with the apparently inex- 
haustible wealth of human intercourse and affec- 
tion? Let us be thankful, therefore, that Heaven 
will not permit man thus to barter away his birth- 
right — thus unambitiously to content himself with 
a lesser fulness of life than that for which he is des- 
tined. Let us be thankful that in the steady course 
of its wise and loving dealings with him Heaven 
does not shrink from sending man the sharpest 
shocks of pain and sorrow and woe, to remind him 
of the transitoriness of all earthly relations, and to 
awaken him to those higher possibilities of life 

[171] 



RELIGION 

which have been placed within his reach; — placing 
before him also, at the termination of a short uncer- 
tain cycle of years, the great change and mystery of 
death, when the net results of his living can be — 
must be — summed up, and the account rendered; 
when his relations with the Universe must be read- 
justed, and he is enabled — nay, compelled — to see 
clearly how far he has been resting his life on that 
which is transitory and ephemeral, and how far on 
the Eternal and Imperishable." 

The following note is closely related to the 
above, and forms an appropriate sequel to it. It 
was, I surmise, written about the same time, since 
it bears traces of the same line of thought : 

"It is exceedingly difficult to determine the 
exact proportion in which intellectual elements 
combine with faith, either in the relations which 
men hold with one another, or in those which they 
sustain with the Eternal. Probably they vary in 
the case of every individual. There seems to be 
no fixed relation between intellectual capacity and 
spirituality — between power of thinking, and power 
of trusting and loving. 

"Consequently, both the grounds of belief, and 
its quality, vary almost infinitely. Some men are 
contented to base their faith — whether in their 
fellow-men or in the Eternal — on grounds which 
to others seem entirely inadequate ; and it is not 
uncommon to find a large amount of intellectual 
belief combined with a very small proportion of 
real spiritual faith; as well as to find a large heart 
resting satisfied with an exceedingly meagre creed. 

"It is interesting and instructive to note the fluc- 

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RELIGION 

tuating relations which these two factors of man's 
being — the intellect and the heart — have sustained 
to one another at various periods in the history of 
the Christian Church. 

"It is a subject which is well worthy of a 
close consideration, and one to which, I think, 
sufficient attention has not yet been paid. How the 
faith which the early Christians reposed in their 
Master — a faith which was a heart-trust, resulting 
from personal acquaintance with Him or with those 
who had thus known Him and caught His spirit, 
and which had not taken, because it as yet had no 
need of, a definite intellectual form; — how this 
faith, as time went on, and those who had actually 
known the Master passed away, and the Churches 
they had founded lost the strength and purity of 
their first love, began to need and gradually ac- 
quired for itself a body to dwell in, words to express 
it, a formulated creed to enshrine it. How for cen- 
turies men wrangled and disputed over the question 
what this form should be, — in what intellectual 
terms the spiritual truths of Christianity should be 
expressed How, meanwhile, and of necessity, the 
relative importance of these truths, and of the intel- 
lectual forms by which they were expressed was 
almost wholly lost sight of, so that 'to believe' came 
to mean to accept, and be in mental agreement with 
a certain system of theological thought, instead of 
to have a living spiritual faith in a Living Spirit. 
How for centuries the whole of Christendom stag- 
nated under this system, until at length the incon- 
sistency between profession and practice which it 
permitted and even encouraged, became too glaring 

[173] 



RELIGION 

to be tolerated, and the reawakening intellectual life 
of Europe burst it into a hundred fragments. How- 
even then the right relations between an intellectual 
belief and a spiritual faith remained undiscovered, 
and each rival school and sect set up that very same 
claim to infallibility which they denied to the Church 
of Rome. How it has only been in our times that 
this discovery of the true relations and relative im- 
portance of these two has been made, and the 
Church has begun to esteem Tightness of life more 
highly than correctness of thought, and to separate 
the true elements of a spiritual life from the intel- 
lectual framework in which they are enclosed. 

"Of course, throughout the whole of this time 
many different degrees of spiritual life have been 
possessed by the individuals who subscribed to, and 
who helped to make, the creeds of the Church. And 
though, broadly speaking, it will be, perhaps, cor- 
rect to say that the creed, and the life of those who 
professed it, bore a certain relationship to one 
another — that the lowest state of morals corre- 
sponded with the most elaborate and most dogmatic 
expression of belief — yet to this rule there have 
been doubtless many exceptions. 

"There is, indeed, a vast difference between the 
creed of the Apostle John — that pure expression of 
a lofty, spiritual faith in which the intellect never 
dominates the spirit, but is always its servant, and 
plastic in its hands to body forth its glowing life — ■ 
and the hard, cold creed of Calvinism, in which the 
head gives its assent to conclusions from which the 
heart revolts, and the natural instincts of the spirit 
have to fight for life against the loveless demon- 

[174] 



RELIGION 

strations of a ruthless logic. And yet hearts as 
loving and tender nourished themselves on that 
creed — nay, not nourished, that is saying too much, 
but let us say 'kept themselves in life under it' — as 
any of the Christian centuries have seen. Only, 
one cannot help thinking of what they might have 
been if John's unfettered creed had been theirs, in- 
stead of that cramping one which their hearts 
secretly protested against, but their intellects felt 
compelled to accept. 

"The distinction between form and substance — 
thought and life — which, as I have said, has within 
the last century begun to be recognized, is one of 
the most hopeful signs of our times. It is a dis- 
tinct return to truth — to the Real. It is a renewed 
indication that that is what will alone satisfy man — 
that, not any shadow or even any reflection of it; 
nor any distorted image of it which may loom upon 
him through the mists of the ages. It shows that 
the forces in human nature which tend towards 
health and growth are still strong — still sufficiently 
powerful to master those which tend towards decay 
and corruption. 

"Much yet remains to be done before this new 
age fashions for itself an adequate creed — a creed 
which ignores none of the precious truths which 
belong to it as the heir of all the ages, but which 
expresses these in such forms as the knowledge and 
enlightenment of the age require, and thus enables 
men to bring their knowledge and their beliefs into 
harmony, — to make the confession of the lips a true 
expression of the convictions of the heart. 

"But meanwhile we can be thankful that in a 

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RELIGION 

period of transition like the present, in which the 
old and the new have not yet blended, men are be- 
ginning to recognize that neither the largeness nor 
the smallness of a man's creed is any true indication 
of the amount of spiritual life which he possesses. 
To express no more and no less than their true and 
fundamental convictions in their professed creed — 
their own convictions concerning life, and the great 
All, as distinguished from their opinions, and their 
inherited or acquired notions — that, in these days, 
is for most men a well-nigh impossible task. The 
mind is, on the one hand, hampered by old formulas 
and conceptions which belong to outworn ideas and 
obsolete modes of thought, and on the other it is 
perplexed by the new knowledge which has burst in 
upon the age, and the new views of life and of the 
Universe which have been unfolded. 

"In such a condition of things it is very neces- 
sary, both in forming our judgments of others, and 
in endeavouring to arrive at Truth ourselves, to 
make appeal from the head to the heart — from the 
perplexities and inconsistencies of thought to the 
purity of deeds and motives. And though I am 
far from saying that thoughts and conceptions have 
no influence on a man's faith, yet, in judging of his 
spirituality, we are far more likely to judge truly 
if we judge by what he does, than if we judge by 
what he thinks; his life will show what his thoughts 
may only very imperfectly express, or may even 
conceal. And our intellectual perplexities are 
bound sooner or later either to disappear, or to 
cease to trouble us, if in our actions we permit our- 
selves to be guided by those spiritual instincts which, 

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in whispered clearness, do not fail to voice them- 
selves through all the tumultuous agitations of 
thought — those spiritual instincts which most 
assuredly will lead the man who takes them as his 
guides to the clearness of spiritual knowledge, to 
the restfulness of spiritual trust." 

I am tempted to linger among these notes on faith 
and its relation to the intellectual faculties, for it 
was a subject which greatly interested my friend, 
and I have found many jottings bearing either di- 
rectly or indirectly upon it among his manuscripts. 
I should, however, unduly expand this chapter if I 
inserted them, and should leave no room for others 
which have an equal claim on the attention of the 
reader. 

I cannot, however, refrain from inserting one 
or two shorter ones, in which some further results 
of his thinking on the subject are characteristically 
expressed — 

"How foolish," he writes in one of his note- 
books, "to make assent to an elaborate system of 
theology, including metaphysical questions of the 
greatest difficulty, and on which men not trained 
in metaphysics are entirely incompetent to pro- 
nounce an opinion, necessary to 'salvation!' 

"And yet this is what the Christian Church has 
been doing more or less all through the centuries. 
Probably she would not acknowledge it, — at any 
rate, not when stated in this bald way. Yet there 
is not one out of every thousand of her leaders, even 
in the present day, to whatever Church or school he 
may belong, who does not consider it necessary for 
men to hold some particular 'view' of the Atone- 



RELIGION 

ment, or of the Person of Christ, before they can 
be 'saved.' 

"When will her teachers come to see that 
Unitarianism and Trinitarianism, Calvinism and 
Arminianism, Comteism and Agnosticism, are all 
true — and all false ; true, inasmuch as they are intel- 
lectual statements of facts; false, inasmuch as they 
only imperfectly express them — imperfectly and 
disproportionately, giving only marred reflections 
of parts and sides of Truth; none mirroring faith- 
fully the whole ? 

"I am convinced that the divergences of 
thought which these 'isms' manifest are due 
much more largely to differences of mental con- 
stitution than to differences of spirituality, and 
that no man has any right to say — at any rate, 
until he has given the subject much more attention 
than the majority of men give to it — that his system 
of thought contains a fuller expression of truth 
than his neighbor's. Perhaps it does from his 
point of view, and perhaps — indeed, most likely — 
his neighbour's way of thinking appears to him ex- 
ceedingly unsatisfactory; but probably this is due 
more to his inability to look at things from more 
than one standpoint, or to take a broad view of 
them, than to any real inferiority of his neighbour's 
system of thought to his own. 

"The more a man truly knows about the funda- 
mental truths of life, the more truth will he see in 
all systems of thought, — and the less contented will 
he be with any of them. I am far from saying that 
all are equally true. On the contrary, I am con- 
vinced that some embody, and are capable of hold- 

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ing — if I may use the expression — far more truth 
than others. Some are cramping and warping to 
a degree, and if held consistently (thank Heaven, 
the majority of men do not attempt to live consist- 
ently by the systems of thought which they so tena- 
ciously uphold in theory) would produce most dis- 
astrous results; while others contain a very fairly 
satisfactory statement of the main truths of life. 
But Truth is infinite, and all intellectual statements 
of it must fall infinitely short of the reality, — just 
as all art falls infinitely short of nature, and no 
painting can contain a perfect expression of all 
nature's truths, but at best only of a few, and can 
represent these only faintly and imperfectly. Inas- 
much as good men have found it possible to live 
noble lives under systems of thought which seem to 
me woefully poor and inadequate, I have learned to 
be extremely careful about the judgments I pro- 
nounce on these. For aught I know they may be 
glorious renderings of Truth's infinite majesty, un- 
foldings of her beauty which I am only prevented 
from seeing by my own blindness. 

"We may depend upon it that no honestly ex- 
pressed thought, no sincerely held conviction, is 
devoid of truth and beauty. It may be — it must 
be — partial, one-sided, incomplete ; but even so does 
the Infinite appear to the man who thinks and be- 
lieves thus; — surely not without profit to all who 
will earnestly endeavour to understand him." 

"Faith is that fundamental affection of personal- 
ity on which are based all its relations with other per- 
sonalities. Creeds are the intellectual forms in which 
this affection is expressed when relations have been 

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established between the soul and the Great Person- 
ality. They are of value to a man just to the extent 
to which they express the recognized and accepted 
axioms with which a man works in trying to main- 
tain this relationship. 

"Of course, these axioms may be very incomplete; 
they may not set forth more than a few of the truths 
on which the science of life, i. e. of correspondence 
with the Eternal, must be built; in which case even 
the man who has the firmest grasp of them, and the 
strongest desire to live by them, may only be able 
to rear a very imperfect edifice of life upon them. 
Or they may be fairly complete, but only partially 
recognized and lived by (even though most stren- 
uously professed), in which case there must be glar- 
ing discrepancies apparent between a man's pro- 
fessed creed and his working axioms. In both 
cases it is possible to hold these axioms with very 
different degrees of firmness, and consequently to 
attain to varying fulness of life. 

"The former condition of things (i. e. that of 
having the axioms of the science of life incomplete) 
was that under which men lived before Christianity 
came to the world. Men in those times did not 
know all the truth which it is necessary to know 
before the fullest and deepest correspondence be- 
tween man and the Eternal can become possible. 
Their knowledge of the fundamental characteristics 
of the Great Personality was imperfect. Conse- 
quently (for the two go together), their knowledge 
of the axioms it is necessary to formulate — the con- 
ditions it is necessary to comply with — before men 

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can attain to the greatest degree of correspondence 
with the Great Personality, was also imperfect. 

"The literature of the Hebrew nation contains 
ample records of the fact that, even when knowl- 
edge is imperfect, a marvellous fulness of life can 
still be gained by effecting this correspondence. 

"With regard to correspondence between finite 
personalities — i. e. right and full relations between 
man and man — the Hebrew, though he saw »i good 
way, never attained to cosmopolitan ideas. Indeed, 
no nation of the ancient world succeeded in extend- 
ing its ideas on this subject beyond the limits of 
its own country and race. The Hebrew knew that 
justice and mercy were the axioms by which he 
should work in his dealings with his fellow-men; 
but he only very imperfectly recognized that he 
should work with them in his intercourse with the 
'uncircumcised,' even as the Greeks only imperfectly 
recognized the necessity of regulating their conduct 
by these axioms when dealing with 'barbarians,' and 
the Romans did not regard the nations they con- 
quered as worthy of the rights of citizenship. 

"An impartial examination of the state of things 
which prevailed before the coming of Jesus Christ 
leads to the conclusion that the working axioms 
of faith were very incomplete even in the case of 
those who had attained to the greatest degree of 
enlightenment. Recognizing this, we cannot fail 
to be impressed by the marvellous advance which 
was made by the Great Teacher of Nazareth when 
He summed up and comprehended all axioms con- 
cerning the Great Personality by proclaiming His 
Fatherhood and love, and supplemented this teach- 

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ing by the necessary corollary of the universal 
brotherhood of man. 

"So great is this advance; so entirely sufficient 
and trustworthy have these axioms of faith proved 
themselves to be for all correspondence which men 
can effect with other personalities; so impossible 
is it to conceive of any right relationship for which 
they do not afford a sufficient basis, — that we are, I 
think, compelled to regard them as final and ulti- 
mate formulations of Truth. The realization of 
what is involved in them — the attaining to the ful- 
ness of Life which it is possible to gain by entering 
into that fulness of correspondence to which they 
open the way — it will take the world a long time to 
accomplish ; indeed, in all probability it will for ever 
remain a delightful impossibility to exhaust their 
possibilities. But I can conceive of, and I want, no 
fuller or broader working axioms for faith than 
these." 

"To what extent is it helpful and beneficial to 
men to subscribe to a creed which formulates truths 
they have never realized? Is it to any extent ad- 
vantageous for them to give a nominal assent to a 
full and clear statement of what I have called 'the 
axioms of faith,' when the true import of these 
axioms is not understood, when the life is regulated 
by very different axioms? 

"Here, for instance, is the axiom, 'God is Love/ 
It has been before the eyes of Christendom ever 
since the New Testament was written, and has 
been nominally accepted as an axiom by all profess- 
ing Christians. But all the time the vast majority 
of them have based both their lives and their the- 

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ology on the far shallower and less comprehensive 
axioms of God's justice and righteousness — axioms 
which the Hebrews had formulated long before 
Jesus Christ appeared. 

"Probably truths, like seeds, require time to 
germinate, and must be planted and lie hidden long 
before they can begin to influence the world. The 
world has always been ages behind its greatest men. 
What Christendom has been doing up to the present 
time has been to realize and to incorporate in life 
the axioms of Hebraism rather than those of Christ. 
Only the choicest souls have hitherto realized the 
latter. Only now, in this present age, do we begin 
to see the truths which the lonely Christ dropped 
into the soil of human nature, beginning to germin- 
ate — beginning to influence not merely individuals, 
but whole classes of society, and nations in their 
relations with one another. So long has it taken 
for the leaven to work. 

"Most likely (to return to my question) the pro- 
fession of unapprehended axioms is beneficial on 
the whole. For if they were not professed they 
might be lost, whereas by being kept in view they 
are apprehended by some, and probably do not fail 
to exercise some influence even on those who do not 
grasp their meaning, or realize their true bearing 
on life. 

"And doubtless their influence would be more 
purely beneficial if professions of belief were con- 
fined to axioms, and the simple facts which have led 
men to accept them, and were not expanded into de- 
ductions from these, which leave an open door for 

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endless differences of opinion, and consequently for 
endless divisions and strifes. 

"What a man's real working creed is, and how 
far it approximates to the one he professes — the 
creed which the wisdom and experience of ages 
has elaborated — depends on many things; — chiefly, 
perhaps, on soul-capacity, which seems to vary as 
much as mental capacity. For undoubtedly there 
are many degrees of natural capacity for loving 
and trusting. It depends also upon a man's environ- 
ment — especially upon the degree in which he has 
had experience of (I mean, has come in contact 
with) lives based on fundamental faith-axioms. The 
quality of the lives of his parents is undoubtedly 
the most important factor in this respect." 

I have only given a small portion of the notes on 
the subject of Faith, or topics closely related to it, 
which I have found among my friend's manuscripts, 
but the limits of my space will not permit the inser- 
tion of more. 

I will proceed to give now his most suggestive 
notes on the subject of Conversion. 



[i8 4 ] 



CHAPTER VI 

religion — ( continued) 
B. Conversion 

"I have long been convinced (I think I have put 
down my ideas about it somewhere)* that the pos- 
session of personality by man involves the conscious- 
ness of an environment of a corresponding order 
i. e. that his consciousness of self makes him con- 
scious of a Not-Self (a Living Not-Self, necessar- 
ily, because the consciousness of self is the con- 
sciousness of being alive), in whose presence he un- 
ceasingly is." 

[Across the page my friend has written, "What, 
it may be asked, of those philosophers who deny 
personality to God? are they denying their own 
consciousness?" I must unhesitatingly reply, "Yes." 
I believe the acknowledgment that a Living Not- 
Self "besets us behind and before, and lays His 
hand upon us," will always be made by the man 
who has a true self-knowledge. At the same time, 
since undoubtedly this consciousness of being in 
touch with a Living Not-Self has many degrees, 
and in not a few — perhaps we ought to say in the 

* I do not know to which of his notes my friend 
specially refers; the reader will remember several allu- 
sions to the subject in those I have embodied in the 
previous chapters. 

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majority — of cases is exceedingly faint, it is not 
surprising to find that it is sometimes overlooked — 
especially when the mind is biased by a preconceived 
notion on the subject."] 

"I am further convinced that man's conscious- 
ness of will-power makes him conscious that this 
Living Not-Self energizes in constant and definite 
ways, and consequently requires him to exercise 
his power of self-determination similarly. r 

"Or, to state the fact in other terms — man, as 
a spirit, is conscious of Spirit overarching his spirit; 
conscious of Being environing his being; conscious 
of a Reality without him corresponding to what is 
most real within him — Spirit, Being, Reality, which 
has Character, and which requires him to be what it 
is, to act in ways harmonizing with its character. 

"But consciousness has many degrees. How 
deeply it can be stirred, what possibilities lie hidden 
in it, to what fulness of life the possession of it may 
enable us to attain, who will dare to say? 

"Likewise knowledge has many degrees. It may 
be imperfect, apprehending only characteristics 
which are more or less superficial; if it penetrate 
to fundamentals, it may have many degrees of 
fulness. Can we say that we fully know anything 
or any person, even when we have penetrated to 
characteristics which we are convinced are primary 
and fundamental? Nay, we only then have found 
a basis on which a firm superstructure of continually 
expanding knowledge can be reared. 

"Now, in saying that a man, owing to the posses- 
sion of personality, is conscious of a Not-Self who 
has character (i. e. exercises will-power in constant 

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RELIGION 

ways), we do not commit ourselves to any definite 
pronouncement concerning this character — any dog- 
matic statement concerning the amount of the 
knowledge which man has of the ways in which the 
Not-Self energizes. # 

"We are left quite free to appeal to the facts 
of human experience for information as to what, at 
any time, or in any individual, this consciousness, 

"These questions have suggested themselves to 
me while pondering over the subject of conversion, 
and I have come to the conclusion that in most men 
not the depths, but only the shallows of conscious- 
ness in regard to the Eternal are stirred; that the 
knowledge of Him which the majority possess is 
partial and incomplete; that most men never attain 
to true manhood, never enter into their birthright; 
never gain that fulness of Life which is possible to 
or this knowledge, has been or is. 

"What are the facts? To what depths of con- 
sciousness of the Non-Ego — of the Eternal Spirit — 
do men ordinarily attain ? To what completeness 
and fulness of knowledge concerning His character 
do they ordinarily reach? and to what completeness 
and fulness can they reach ? 

them. What the Great Teacher called the 'new 
birth' is never undergone by them. They remain 
on far inferior levels of life, in the mists of the 
valleys, never mounting to the clear sunshine of the 
heights — either breathing the foul air and suffering 
from the agues and fevers of selfishness, or, at best, 
toiling along the rough and cheerless way of duty 
uninspired by affection, and conscientiousness unil- 
luminated by love. 

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RELIGION 

"I am going here to put down the reasons which 
have led me to this conclusion. I shall endeavour 
to state as clearly and faithfully as possible the facts 
concerning the consciousness of the knowledge of 
the Eternal which most men have, as far as I have 
been able to ascertain them; and then to see what 
light they throw on the mystery of the 'new birth.' 

"When a child first wakes to conscious life, the 
degree of consciousness which he possesses is very 
inferior to that possessed by a full-grown man. All 
his faculties and powers, though present, are unde- 
veloped. Only gradually do they unfold bringing 
him continually into fuller relations with the world 
without him ; placing him in possession of a contin- 
ually increasing measure of conscious life. 

"Under ordinary circumstances this development 
(which, though not exclusively confined to the 
child's physical and intellectual faculties, is at any 
rate much more marked in them than in the moral 
and affectional parts of his nature) proceeds slowly, 
and by almost imperceptible transitions, for the first 
twelve or fifteen years of his life. During this time 
he continues to be in a more or less dependent con- 
dition, not usually having full liberty to act for him- 
self, but being guided and restrained by his parents, 
or those to whose care they have entrusted him. 

"Though the development of a child's physical 
and intellectual faculties is more marked than that 
of the other parts of his nature, nevertheless the 
influence of the moral training which he undergoes, 
and of the moral and affectional atmosphere which 
he breathes, produces in the end even more impor* 
tant effects than his physical and intellectual de- 

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velopment and training. Only, for the first twelve 
or fifteen years of his life, this moral training is al- 
most passively received, this moral and affectional 
atmosphere is unquestioningly breathed. His par- 
ents' (or teachers') actions are the standards of 
right action; his parents' moral and religious ideas 
are the standards of Truth. He has no independent 
ideas (I am speaking broadly; of course, there are 
many exceptions), no independent convictions; his 
virtues are imitative or instinctive, as are also his 
faults — due chiefly to inherited tendencies, yielded 
to or acted upon without premeditation; and to 
habits acquired by observation of others; not the 
outcome of volitions which have the sanction of an 
independent judgment. 

"At the end of this period, however, a change 
takes place — both a change in his physical constitu- 
tion, and a still greater one in his thoughts and feel- 
ings. The two are probably closely connected, and 
have mutual and far-reaching relations, which I do 
not enter upon now. However, in his physical con- 
stitution, a change occurs which has not inappro- 
priately been compared to the adding of an entirely 
new range of stops to an organ ; and this, which 
completes the development of that part of his 
nature, and makes him a man in body, is accom- 
panied — or quickly followed — by a change in him- 
self, and in the relations he sustains to those who, 
up to this time, have guided and controlled him. 

"For whereas he hitherto has been dependent on 
them, and has looked to them both for physical sup- 
port and for intellectual and moral guidance, he now 
begins to work, to act, and to think for himself. He 

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RELIGION 

comes into possession of himself, and enters upon 
the duties and responsibilities of manhood. He no 
longer unhesitatingly accepts the explanations and 
ideas of others ; he begins to question, to ponder, to 
argue. His moral ideal ceases to be merely the 
resultant of the instruction and the example of his 
parents and teachers ; he begins to develop one of 
his own, to which he makes appeal even from those 
whom he loves and trusts most. He no longer 
refers to them as the authoritative source of the 
rules and commandments to which he feels that he 
ought to — and, to a greater or less extent, does — 
yield obedience ; he looks beyond them to Him 
whom he has been taught to call 'God' ; to whom he 
transfers that obedience which he has previously 
given to them. 

"And not only the obedience, but also the affection 
and love. At least he should transfer these; or 
rather, not so much transfer, as supplement them by 
a higher affection and love given to the Eternal ; — 
not loving and honouring his parents less, but find- 
ing in the Antitype satisfaction for those needs of 
his expanding nature which the type now fails to 
satisfy completely. 

"But this final stage of development the majority 
never reach. Nay, the majority of men can hardly 
be said to reach that far lower one of obedience to 
acknowledged laws and commandments. 

"The subject becomes complicated here, and it 
is difficult to sketch general features without appear- 
ing to ignore important exceptions ; but the im- 
mense majority of men may, I think, after they 

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RELIGION 

have arrived at manhood, be classed under the fol- 
lowing two heads : — 

"i. Those who in their actions are mainly 
guided by selfish considerations. 

"2. Those who endeavour, more or less stren- 
uously, to regulate their actions by law. 

"1. The majority of men, when they assume 
t^p management of their own lives, practically live 
for themselves. Of course, there are many degrees 
of selfishness; and many modifying influences are 
at work to hinder the full carrying out of this 
principle, and to disguise it, even to the individuals 
themselves. Few men, if any, entirely stifle their 
natural promptings to unselfish action, or will refuse 
to let these sometimes influence them, even when 
they hinder the carrying out of their own selfish 
plans. Few men entirely shake off the influences 
of early moral training. To meet with selfishness 
in its most glaring and brazenfaced forms is rare. 
Most men would prefer rather to inconvenience them- 
selves a little than to do some act of gross injustice, 
involving pain and sorrow to their fellow-men. 

"Nevertheless, in spite of this inclination to avoid 
the extreme claims of this principle by which they 
live, selfishness is their animating and controlling 
motive. Their own interests, their own aims, their 
own pleasures, are their chief concern. They allow 
neither the laws of God nor the feelings of their 
fellow-men to deter them when some selfish desire 
craves to be gratified, or some selfish end is to be 
reached. 

"2. But a large number of men are influenced 
in their actions by other considerations. They ad- 

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RELIGION 

mit the validity of the voice of conscience; and the 
authority of the imperatives of the moral Law ; and 
they endeavour, with greater or less consistency 
and earnestness, to live by them. 

"No clear line can be drawn between this class 
and those who regulate their lives by selfish motives 
— the one shades off into the other by imperceptible 
degrees. At the same time, the two classes are dis- 
tinct ; and a marked difference is to be observed 
between the lives of those who can be taken as fair 
types of the former and those who may be considered 
average representatives of the latter. For men who 
belong to this class are prevented by the Moral Law, 
to which they own obedience, from falling into the 
lowest depths of selfishness; and often, when they 
have a clear recognition of the obligations it im- 
poses on them, and a firm desire to conform to them, 
they present to the world high examples of integrity 
and uprightness. 

"It will be found, I think, that all who belong to 
this class have been either favoured with exception- 
ally moral surroundings in their early days, or pos- 
sess (whether through heredity or otherwise, we 
need not now inquire), a certain bias towards vir- 
tue. Generally both these influences have been at 
work. Be that as it may, the fact remains that they 
acknowledge the supremacy of a moral Ideal, and 
are disposed with more or less earnestness to con- 
form their lives to it. 

"And this suggests an important question, a clear 
answer to which will throw a great deal of light on 
Conversion. Whence do men get their conceptions 
of God, and of the contents of the Moral Law ? 

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RELIGION 

"The relations between men's convictions con- 
cerning the Moral Law, and their conceptions re- 
garding God's character, must, I think, possess a 
certain degree of harmony; but very often their 
professed conceptions of His character, and their 
conceptions concerning His moral government, 
show a very marked inconsistency. Whether this 
is owing to the fact that they do not understand 
the real meaning of the terms they use, because they 
have never experienced (or only very partially and 
imperfectly) the facts of conscious life which they 
describe, is an interesting question, which I must 
some time consider.* 

"I have said that when a child emerges into man- 
hood, he no longer tacitly accepts the moral Ideal 
presented to him by his friends and teachers. He 
has developed one of his own, with which he com- 
pares, and if necessary judges, the precepts and the 
actions even of those who are nearest and dearest 
to him. How does he come by this independent 
ideal ? 

"I have also said that he transfers — or should 
transfer — the obedience he renders to his parents, 
to the Supreme Being; or, at any rate, supplements 
the former obedience by the latter. Whence does 
he get his conceptions concerning this Supreme 
Being? 

"To these questions, I think only one answer is 
possible ; he derives them from others — from ex- 
perience. 

"I do not want here to discuss the nature of con- 

* The reader will remember that a note which I have given 
touches on this question. 

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RELIGION 

science ; I will only say that, however much I should 
like to believe that the spirit (the personality) has 
clear, original impressions concerning the character 
of the Great Spirit, and concerning the Moral Law 
implanted in it from birth (beyond those which are 
due to heredity), I am compelled to admit that all 
facts go to show that (before the New Birth takes 
place) a man's entire knowledge of God, and of the 
Moral Law, is derived from those with whom he is 
associated (either living persons or writers in 
books) : no other forms do his conceptions of God 
take, no other ideas has he about morality, than 
those he has thus obtained. This alone will ac- 
count for the immense number of variations in the 
quality of moral ideas, and in the clearness of con- 
ceptions concerning the Great Spirit, which have 
occurred, and do still occur, in various countries 
and among various individuals I think that in all 
cases (certainly in all cases where the child has been 
taught anything about the Supreme Being) a sepa- 
rate — though always anthromorphic — conception 
of Him is gradually formed in the mind (often be- 
ginning to form very early), built out of what the 
child had heard about Him, to which are attached 
(also gradually, but more quickly and more com- 
pletely when the change I have before alluded to 
takes place) those ideas of obligation which, as I 
have said, are at this period transformed from those 
to whom the child has been in subjection, to the 
God he has been brought up to believe in. 

"In cases where the moral atmosphere in which 
the child has been brought up (especially that of 
his home) has been pure and sweet, and the con- 

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RELIGION 

ceptions which he has gained of God from other 
sources do not greatly exceed in beauty those 
which he gains from watching the lives of his 
parents, that moral Ideal which he has gradually 
obtained will not compel him to note any painful 
discords marring the moral beauty of his actions; 
and throughout his life their example will be help- 
ful to him, as embodying and giving a greater defi- 
niteness to that Ideal. It is to be feared, however, 
that the cases are few in which a painful discrepancy 
is not soon manifest to the child between his Ideal 
and the actions of those whom he loves and looks 
up to most. This is especially the case where the 
child gains his chief knowledge of God from the 
Bible. His receptive mind readily accepts its high 
precepts, and yields to the attractive power of the 
noble characters it portrays ; though perhaps he has 
not yet had sufficient experience of life to appre- 
hend their true sublimity, and — not comprehending 
the difficulty of attaining to their level — does not 
make sufficient allowance for, or judge with suffi- 
cient charity, those whose lives show such glaring 
defects in comparison. 

"But the chief fact I wish to note with regard 
to these conceptions of God and morality which the 
child gains, and which (if he remain in either of the 
two classes I have described above) he continues to 
hold with but little modification through manhood, 
is this — that they are conceptions about Him rather 
than knowledge of Him. 

"I do not care to press this distinction too far, 
but it is worth considering a little. 

"The ideas and conceptions of God which a child 

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RELIGION 

has are those which he receives from other minds. 
They vary greatly in truthfulness and clearness ac- 
cording to the age and the particular moral atmos- 
phere in which he has grown up, but they are in 
every case alike in this, that they only describe and 
represent to his mind truths — Reality — of which he 
is not yet directly conscious, which he believes in 
from report (and consequently according to report, 
not otherwise), but which he does not yet see for 
himself. He has not yet known the Reality of 
which they tell; he has not yet verified the reports 
concerning it by his own experience We are famil- 
iar enough with the distinction between these two 
kinds of knowledge in our everyday experience. 
We all know how different it is to know about a 
thing from other people's descriptions of it, and to 
know it from having seen and examined it for our- 
selves. We may know about many places and 
things we have never seen, and often gain very 
clear conceptions about them from conversation 
with people who have seen them, or from books or 
pictures. But we experience widely different feel- 
ings, we have a wholly different knowledge of them, 
when we see them for ourselves. This is the case 
even when other people's descriptions are fuller, and 
take note of more details, than our own observation. 
These descriptions are exceedingly valuable in help- 
ing us to see when we stand face to face with the 
object described; but no fulness of description will 
produce in a man the same effect as personal obser- 
vation. The two experiences are distinct. The 
man who is able to say, T have seen,' though he may 
not be able to give so good a description of what he 

[i 9 6] 



RELIGION 

has seen as one who has only gained his knowledge 
from others, stands in a wholly different position, 
has a wholly different kind of knowledge. He not 
only knows about it, he knows if. 

"And if this is true of the knowledge we can 
have of things, it is far truer of the knowledge we 
can have of persons. Who will venture to say he 
knows a person when he has never seen him or had 
intercourse with him, but has only had his features, 
his habits and his character and disposition described 
to him by others ? Or can he be said to know him, 
even when he has seen him and noted his actions and 
habits? Is not this knowledge wholly superficial? 
Can he be said to truly know him before he has dis- 
covered what his thoughts are, what the principles 
which guide his conduct, the motives which influ- 
ence him, the affections which inspire him ? 

"I cannot now write fully on this point. It 
would take me too far from what I want to say 
about Conversion to point out how far this analogy 
holds good — how completely by means of it can 
be illustrated the various kinds of knowledge of, 
and the various kinds of relationship with, the 
Eternal which men have or can have. 

"What I wish to note now is that there are these 
two kinds of possible knowledge — the knowledge 
about, received from others, and the knowledge of, 
gained for one's self — distinct in kind, and placing 
the person who possesses the one or the other in very 
different relations with the object known. 

"I am quite ready to admit, however, that there 
are many cases in which (where the knowledge is 
of persons) this knowledge about them, which we 

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receive from others is invaluable— indispensable, 
indeed, in helping us to know them. If a biog- 
rapher, for instance, gives a true and faithful picture 
of the man he is writing about, we may through him 
get to know the man as well as, perhaps even better 
than, if we had met him face to face. Nevertheless, 
it must be borne in mind that it will not be from the 
biographer's account of his subject's actions and 
habits that we shall get truly to know the man, nor 
yet from his explanations of these, nor even from 
his interpretation of the man's words and thoughts, 
though these may be helpful. It will be the truth- 
fully recorded words, and thoughts, and actions of 
the man himself which will help us most of all, — 
perhaps it is not too much to say, will alone help us, 
to get to know him. And in giving us these, the 
biographer is not giving us knowledge about the 
man, but direct knowledge of him ; he is simply 
acting as a medium whereby direct communication 
can be established between our spirits and the spirit 
of him whose life he depicts. 

"It is thus that, through the Gospels, we get to 
know Jesus — know Him so truly and fully that, 
though (as Peter says) we have never seen Him, 
we can yet love Him. 

"But it is necessary, in order to understand 
what the New Birth is, to note further that in the 
case of knowledge of persons (the only illustra- 
tion, this, which will adequately exemplify the rela- 
tions between man and the Eternal) the main dif- 
ference which occurs in conscious experience when 
the transition is made from knowledge about them 
to knowledge of them is that the emotions are 

[i 9 8] 



RELIGION 

roused, the affections are stimulated (I am speaking" 
of cases where the individuals are worthy to be 
loved), — roused and stimulated, if not in a wholly 
different way, at any rate with an intensity and to a 
depth which is not possible as long as the knowledge 
is knowledge about them only. 

"Of course, in cases where the person known is 
worthy of affection, or where he is not truly known, 
or not known deeply enough to inspire affection, — 
as for instance ( i ) in the case of a cruel and selfish 
master whom a slave is compelled to obey; or (2) 
in the case of a master who is really good and wor- 
thy of respect and love, but whom the slave does not 
know intimately enough to discover these qualities 
in him, but only those sterner and harsher ones 
which in ordinary relations with him (either di- 
rectly or through his agents) he exhibits: — in these 
cases affection cannot be roused. 

"But however true and accurate the reported 
knowledge of a man may be, it cannot rouse the 
same emotion, or kindle 'and sustain the same affec- 
tions, as direct, personal knowledge can. 

"If it were necessary for me to discuss in 
greater detail the nature of this secondary knowl- 
edge, I might proceed to elaborate still further, 
distinguishing between imperfect knowledge about 
a man, and full, faithful, and complete knowledge 
about him; but there is no need to go further into 
the matter. Moreover, all knowledge about a man 
must be imperfect — it cannot fully and faithfully 
acquaint us with what he is; and all imperfect 
knowledge of a man, occupying itself, as it does, 
chiefly, if not exclusively, with what is external and 

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superficial, and not penetrating to what is central 
and fundamental, can only be called knowledge 
about him; so that any distinction which can be 
drawn between the two is more a distinction in 
thought than in fact. 

"I would, however, insist with emphasis on the 
fact to which I have just alluded, i. e. that this kind 
of knowledge is not capable of kindling and sustain- 
ing affection. Its imperfection, even if it is pri- 
mary knowledge, does not permit of that trust being 
reposed in the being thus known, which is the only 
basis on which affection can rest. And if it is sec- 
ondary knowledge, thought is incapable of sustain- 
ing, by mere contemplation of a mental image, 
which is never compared with Reality, and which 
never knows the formative and remodelling touch 
of the living Truth upon it, that glow of pure emo- 
tion, that throb of undying affection, which is ex- 
perienced when a fellow-mortal, worthy of our 
esteem, is known, and trusted, and loved. At the 
best only inferior emotions can accompany this im- 
perfect knowledge — fear, awe, and perhaps rever- 
ence ; not those purest and deepest feelings of which 
the soul is capable when heart goes out to meet 
heart, and spirit mingles with spirit, in the raptur- 
ous communion of love. 

"And, to carry this line of thought one step fur- 
ther, if the individual known is in a position of 
power and authority over him who knows, and has 
a right to claim obedience and service from him, 
the character of the obedience and service the one 
renders (and in a very considerable measure its 
degree also) will depend on the amount of knowl- 

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edge he has of the other (I am assuming that the 
individual known is good, and worthy of respect 
and affection), and on the nobleness of the emotions 
which he consequently experiences with regard to 
him. 

"If he regards him with fear and awe, he will 
serve and obey him unwillingly, grudgingly, from 
compulsion, or from prudence, endeavouring to 
keep the amount of his service and obedience as near 
to a minimum as possible. As the emotions which 
he feels towards him increase in nobleness, the char- 
acter of his service will alter, becoming ever more 
willing, and more freed from the feeling of compul- 
sion, as his emotions approach more nearly to the 
noblest, sublimest feeling of love. And when love 
is aroused, all unwillingness vanishes, all constraint 
is removed; he serves from that time freely, will- 
ingly, joyfully; the two are no longer master and 
servant, but friend and friend, the one serving, the 
other receiving service, in the contented spirit of 
joyful fellowship. 

"Now I find that the character of the obedience 
and service which is rendered to God by the men 
who are included in the two classes under which 
I have arranged them above, never goes beyond that 
inspired either by ignoble emotions, or by those 
which, though they can be classed under the noble 
emotions, come short of the noblest one of love. 

"Roughly speaking, I think we may say that 
those who are included under the first class are 
prompted to obedience (in so far as they obey at 
all) only by ignoble emotions; while those who 
are included under the second, though very often 

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a good deal of their obedience is prompted to some 
extent by ignoble emotions, yet are chiefly influ- 
enced by those emotions — such as reverence, 
gratitude, or respectful admiration — which are 
noble, but which fall short of the noblest. 

"Consequently, these latter, though they often 
follow the voice of conscience most faithfully, and 
obey the Moral Law most diligently, do not attain 
to that perfectly free, willing, and joyful obedience 
which only love can inspire. A fearfulness of 
offending, an unwillingness to go beyond the letter 
of the commandment, a painfulness, is observable 
in their service. Their whole life seems under 
restraint, and is without freedom, spring, or 
buoyancy. And this must be so, for love alone re- 
leases from the fetters of law; love alone inspires; 
the service which love renders is alone spontaneous, 
and possessed of that instinctiveness which un- 
erringly guides to right, to full, to perfect action." 

"And this brings me to the heart of the matter 
— to the question to which a satisfying answer must 
be given before even the possibility of the New 
Birth can be admitted. 

"I have hitherto been examining the facts con- 
cerning the God-consciousness and the knowledge 
concerning Him, which the majority of men pos- 
sess; and I think they go to establish completely 
the view which I put forward at the beginning of 
this essay — that this consciousness and this knowl- 
edge are with most men imperfect, — with the large 
majority exceedingly feeble and defective. The 
knowledge of God which the majority of men pos- 

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RELIGION 

sess, fails to reach the fulness and the dignity of 
true, fundamental knowledge; and the emotions 
which prompt their obedience fall short of the 
noblest emotion which can animate the human spirit 
— the emotion of love. 

"We now come to the question — But is truer 
knowledge obtainable? Can deeper depths of 
consciousness be stirred? Can fundamental truths 
concerning the Eternal be arrived at ? Is there solid 
ground of truth on which to base the emotion of 
love? 

"Here again, as in the previous part of my 
inquiry, the appeal must be made to facts. I 
have pointed out how far ordinary consciousness 
and ordinary knowledge go ; how far are we justi- 
fied in saying that extraordinary consciousness and 
knowledge can go — have gone? 

"There are two, and only two, sets of facts to 
which we can appeal for answer to the question : 
the facts concerning human nature — its constitution, 
capacity, needs ; and the recorded and observed facts 
of conscious experience. 

"With regard to the former, modern philosophy 
has endeavoured to put them out of court in this 
inquiry by refusing to admit the legitimacy and 
the reasonableness of religious faith or trust. It 
is unwilling to admit in the case of faith that it is 
a faculty, the possession of which is a reasonable 
ground for supposing that somewhere or other 
in the universe there is that which will satisfy it, — 
that the Non-ego must contain satisfaction for this 
as well as for all the wants of the Ego, — that the 
Eternal Spirit who created us, and gave us the 

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RELIGION 

constitution we possess, created us to trust, i. e. to 
exercise and find support in a fitting environment, 
for that faculty of faith which we undoubtedly 
possess. Nay, it even plunges into deeper depths 
of doubt and unbelief by questioning whether the 
possession of any faculties is a sufficient ground for 
supposing that the universe contains satisfaction for 
them. It is infected by a scepticism which spreads 
its blighting influence over the whole of life; noth- 
ing is sacred from its withering breath ; it is palsied 
by a faithlessness — 

" 'Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life.' 

Of course, in the presence of such doubt as this, 
reason can do nothing but shut its mouth. Argu- 
ment is useless where the bases of argument are 
denied; and those who accept and those who do 
not accept the axiom, that faculties imply the exist- 
ence of that which will satisfy them — those who 
have faith and those who have not — must divide 
into two for ever irreconcilable parties. 

"There are two facts, however, which I would 
note before leaving the point. The first is that life 
is far ahead of thought — at any rate, of much mod- 
ern philosophical thought — in the matter. For 
there is hardly a single action or relationship in 
everyday life which does not rest on this axiom — 
which does not pivot itself unhesitatingly on the 
trustful confidence that wants imply, and will surely 
find, that which will satisfy them. The validity of 
this assumption is admitted in ordinary intercourse 
between men with a readiness, and to an extent, 
of which the philosophers seem to be but little 

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RELIGION 

aware, or to which, at any rate, they do but scant 
justice. 

"The other point I would note about it is, that 
it forms the very corner-stone of the teaching of the 
Great Teacher of Nazareth. 

" 'Behold the birds of the air, for they sow not, 
neither do they reap, nor gather into barns, yet 
your Heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not 
of much more value than they ?' 

" Tf God so clothe the grass of the field, which 
to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven, shall 
he not much more clothe you : O ye of little faith ?' 

" Tf ye, being evil, know how to give good gifts 
unto your children, how much more shall your 
Father who is in Heaven give good things to them 
that ask Him ?' 

"These utterances speak for themselves, and 
need no comment. And seeing that the Great 
Teacher based His appeal to men to go to God, and 
seek from Him satisfaction for the cravings and 
needs of their nature, on the assumption that He 
had given these cravings in order to satisfy them, 
and would satisfy them as surely as He supplied the 
needs of things He had placed lowe** in the scale of 
existence, it surely is legitimate to use the same 
argument still, let a pessimistic and agnostic philos- 
ophy doubt and deny as it will. 

"And (applying this argument) are there not 
longings and cravings in man which cry for a fuller 
knowledge of the Eternal than most possess? Are 
there not heart-feelings which hunger for a satis- 
faction which in most cases they do not find? Are 
there not dormant emotions which might be roused, 

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RELIGION 

if they could find that on which they might nourish 
themselves? Does any man feel that he has drunk 
fully of the wine of life — that he has no undevel- 
oped or unsatisfied faculties ; no ideal which he does 
not long to realize? The unanimous voice of hu- 
manity replies — 

: "Tis life of which our nerves are scant, 
More life and fuller that we want/ 

"True, this longing is vague in most men — vague 
and misunderstood; and they are consequently led 
to try to appease it in foolish and impossible ways, 
seeking in sensual pleasures, and in material things, 
satisfaction for those infinite cravings which these 
can never satisfy. 

"But we are not without evidence of the true 
character of these longings, or of the kind of satis- 
faction which alone will appease them. Here and 
there men have appeared who have understood 
themselves, — men in whom the dumb cravings of 
humanity have become articulate. 

" 'My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God,' 
cried one of these. 'Show us the Father, and it 
sufficeth us,' murmured another; and the unsatis- 
fied heart of man, hearing its imperfectly satisfied 
longings thus thrown into form, replies, 'Yes, that 
is what I want.'* 

* My friend puts in brackets here — 

["One form which this longing has taken — the desire on 
the part of man to satisfy justice, to fill up somehow the 
gap between what they feel they ought to be, and what 
they know they are — in other words, to make atonement 
for Sin, has been much insisted on by theologians, and 

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RELIGION 

"But in arriving at the truth in this inquiry, the 
chief appeal must be made to the second series of 
facts to which I have referred: the recorded and 
observed facts of conscious experience. It is not 
enough to point to man's unsatisfied cravings, and 
dormant or undeveloped powers; if there were no 
proof that they had been or could be satisfied, there 
would always be room for the gnawings of an un- 
appeasable doubt, in the presence of the mystery of 
a silent universe. 

"Have they been satisfied? That is the question 
which must be answered. Have there been any 
men who have known the Eternal with a more 
fundamental knowledge than that which the ma- 
jority have had — any who have had a fuller con- 
sciousness of Him than most; who have deemed 
that they have had sufficient knowledge of Him to 
justify them in basing on it the supreme emotion of 
love; whose relations with Him have risen to com- 
munion, whose service has been that of friendship; 
to whom duty has been a pleasure, and obedience a 
passionate joy; who have felt themselves knit to 
Him by the bonds of a supreme and undying affec- 
tion; — have there been such? 

"Yes. 

"They have been few. Prior to the Christian 
era they were almost exclusively confined to one 
nation; at least, history gives us but dim and 

has been made the ground of the doctrine of the Atone- 
ment. They seem to me, however, to miss the chief 
significance of the fact, namely, that this craving to sat- 
isfy justice is only the obverse side of the desire to be 
just. I must think this out."] 

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RELIGION 

doubtful glimpses here and there of a few such out- 
side of its favoured ranks. 

"They have had many different degrees of fulness 
of knowledge ; many different degrees of fulness of 
conscious communion, and of joy and delight in 
service. One only stands out from all the rest 
supreme in flawless perfection of knowledge, in 
unfathomable depth of communion, in uttermost 
degree of loving and self-renouncing service. Him 
ithe world has never since ceased — can never cease — 
to look up to and adore as the Ideal of Humanity, 
and the unapproachable type of the Eternal. Beside 
Him, all other ideals appear poor and mean, all 
other types imperfect. Since He came, the world 
has been a changed world ; and many, drawing from 
the stores of His wisdom, and being inspired by 
His Love (many, where there were few before, 
many, who could boast of no special endowments, 
no brilliant attainments), have been lifted into a new 
life; have tasted of His peace and of His joy; 
have learned what that service is which is freedom, 
and that love which casts out fear; have come 
through Him to the Father. I say, many; and 
indeed, in comparison with the number of those 
who, out of all the unumbered millions who lived 
before Jesus Christ came, can be ranged in the 
ranks of these choice souls, those whom the Chris- 
tian centuries have produced of this order have 
been numerous. But in comparison with the multi- 
tudes which compose the generations of mankind, 
they have been, and are still, the few. Here and 
there among the careworn, sorrowful, despairing 

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RELIGION 

faces of the crowd, we meet with eyes which shine 
with a light 

" 'That never was on sea or shore,' 

with foreheads which bear the stamp of peace, with 
a mien which tells of the consciousness of sonship 
with the Eternal. But how seldom! And the 
great world rolls on in its death-in-life, heedless of 
them (nay, often rolls over them, and crushes them, 
even as it crushed Him who came to save it), or 
toils along the painful, unilluminated path of duty, 
and will not drink of the cup of life which is ready 
at its lips. 

"But though those who have attained to fuller 
knowledge of the Eternal ( and in whom the deeper 
depths of consciousness have been stirred, have 
always been, and are still, the few; — and though 
only One had fullness of knowledge, which the 
world has been unable to exhaust, and fulness of 
life, which the world has been unable to compre- 
hend, — we cannot ignore their experience, we can- 
not refuse to listen to their testimony. 

"This, in very truth, is what they have found life 
to be — this, no otherwise. Human beings like our- 
selves, they have discovered in it these possibilities; 
they have attained to these actualities. Surely these 
are facts of tremendous significance — a significance 
the importance of which in any attempt to compre- 
hend human nature cannot be overestimated. For 
the attainments of the few more than outweigh the 
failures of the many: we must measure life by its 
plus quantities, not by its minus ones. 

"What, then, is the characteristic feature of this 

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RELIGION 

deeper consciousness? of this fuller life? By what 
marks are we to distinguish those who possess it 
from those whom I have ranged under the other 
two classes? 

"The answer to this question I have already- 
hinted at. There is one feature which distinguishes 
this life from all other — affection; there is one 
note which vibrates in the hearts of all those who 
possess it — the note of love. 

"I have said that only fundamental knowledge 
will support such a deep consciousness of God as 
this, or rouse and nourish the emotion of love. 

"I do not want now to enter into the question: 
how those who have attained to this fundamental 
knowledge of God (or what they have deemed 
fundamental, and built their lives on, with such 
grand results) have gained it. The question is one 
of great interest, and also of great mystery; but a 
theory about it is not necessary for my present 
purpose (nor indeed for any purpose, except the 
desire to know) if the fact be granted that this 
knowledge is true and fundamental knowledge. 

"But let the appeal be once more to facts. What 
kind of knowledge, what kind of convictions con- 
cerning the character of the Eternal do we find 
invariably associated with this deeper conscious- 
ness — with this fuller life? 

"In all cases, knowledge — convictions — which 
include and lay most stress on those qualities 
which, in human beings, we cannot help considering 
as most fundamental — i. e. not merely or chiefly 
physical characteristics, as strength or beauty; not 
merely intellectual qualities, as knowledge and wis- 

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RELIGION 

dom; but moral and heart qualities. In every case 
in which the fullest Life has been reached ; in which 
joy and delight in service have been greatest; in 
which the noblest emotions have been kindled, the 
heart-qualities of the Eternal are those on which at- 
tention has been centered. Before the Christian 
centuries we find that the convictions concerning 
these heart-qualities approached nearer and nearer 
to, and after the coming of Jesus Christ that they 
invariably culminated in, the conviction that the 
deepest and most fundamental characteristic of the 
Eternal is love. 

"And here I find that I must insert a qualification 
to two remarks I have just made. The first con- 
cerns what I have said about the men who, before 
the time of Jesus Christ, attained to this deeper 
consciousness of God, and to this fuller knowledge 
of Him, which I am now considering. 

"Deep indeed the consciousness was, and full the 
knowledge, — so different from the consciousness 
and the knowledge of those whom I have included 
in the other two classes, that I think I am amply 
justified in placing them among those whose dis- 
tinguishing mark is affection and love. 

"And yet I find that it is necessary to make a 
distinction between the consciousness of and know- 
ledge of God which even the noblest souls had who 
lived before the Christian era, and that which has 
been attained to since. (I have in my thoughts 
chiefly the noblest souls of the Hebrew nation, and 
I think there is no need to look further. There are 
few indeed who will not admit that no man of any 
other nation, not even the sage of India — who to all 

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RELIGION 

appearance was the noblest soul the world pro- 
duced outside the bounds of Palestine — excelled the 
choicest spirits of the Hebrew race in sublimity of 
conviction concerning, and in fulness of conscious 
communion with, the Eternal). Their knowledge 
of Him in some cases almost reached to the con- 
viction that He was the Father ; the emotions which 
accompanied their communion with Him almost 
trembled into love. But not quite. There was 
always a reaching out to a fuller knowledge not 
yet grasped. Their love and their emotions were 
like those of a bridegroom who with eager anticipa- 
tion looks forward to, and yearns for the time when 
he shall possess his bride ; not of him who possesses. 
He that is least in the kingdom of Heaven is greater 
than they. 

"And the second qualification I have to make 
concerns what I said about it not being necessary 
to ascertain how those who have attained to funda- 
mental knowledge of God have gained it. I was 
thinking of inspiration, and had in my mind only 
those who have been the sources of this knowledge 
— the prophets and seers of the world. That ques- 
tion it is not necessary to discuss here. 

"But it is necessary to note this : the men who 
reached the heights before the coming of Jesus 
Christ were isolated, lonely men; men in whose 
case — though they nearly all belonged to one nation, 
and, viewed in the perspective of history, present a 
continuous line of mountain peaks along which the 
light of Truth was flashed for fifteen hundred years 
— it is impossible to trace how the Truth was 
kindled, whence it came. It blazes up and burns, 

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RELIGION 

now in a prophet, now in a king; now in a priest; 
now in a herdsman; and then for a while it dies 
down, and we cannot trace it for years, or even for 
generations. It is like those variable stars which 
ever and anon flash out in the heavens, and then 
fade, to be succeeded by others as uncertain and 
transitory ; or like the flash of a sudden sun-caught 
wave on a silent sea, when some inhabitant of its 
depths has for a moment disturbed its calm. How 
it was kindled there, I say, we do not know. Men 
murmur 'inspiration,' scattering dust to hide their 
ignorance. So long as we know and feel that it 
was the spark sent forth when men's souls struck 
Truth, what need we of further knowledge ? 

"But the case is different with those who, in the 
Christian centuries, have gained this deeper know- 
ledge of God, and have attained to the consciousness 
of living fellowship with Him. 

"Their knowledge has all come from One 
Source ; their love has been kindled from One Heart 
— the Heart of the Man Jesus Christ. Whether the 
world, by the slow and painful process of develop- 
ment by experience, could have arrived by itself at 
fundamental knowledge of the Eternal, and could 
have attained to that full life of communion with 
Him of which the capacity of human consciousness 
permits, is a question which I cannot answer. I 
once thought it probable (see Chap. II.). I now 
say, I do not know. But it is a question which 
it is now idle to ask. For not thus alone, and 
by slow and painful effort has it been decreed that 
man should gain this knowledge; not thus tardily 
were the slumbering depths of his being to be 

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RELIGION 

stirred, and his dormant capabilities to be 
aroused to life. For quietly, in the midst of a gen- 
eration that knew Him not, a Man was born and 
grew up, who, with a bound, sprang to the highest 
height of human knowledge and wisdom, of human 
perfection, of human love; One who condensed in 
one word all knowledge of the Eternal of which the 
utmost wisdom can conceive, or which the utmost 
need can crave; One who concentrated into a three 
years' ministry the utmost beauty and sweet perfect- 
ness of character of which the human imagination 
can dream ; One who displayed by one act the ut- 
most love which the human heart in its deepest long- 
ings can need. 

"If any man asks how knowledge of Truth — of 
God — has been gained, or could have been gained 
apart from Jesus of Nazareth, I could frame some 
kind of answer, perhaps various answers. But it is 
needless to give them, for the Truth is there. But 
if any one asks how the slumbering depths of human 
(Consciousness can be stirred — how man's undevel- 
oped capacity for loving and being loved can be 
roused to activity, I can only give one answer, but 
with all the tones of certitude : 'By the power of a 
supremely self-sacrificing life, by the power of a su- 
premely self-renouncing love.' 

"And this suggests many thoughts which I must 
at present refrain from writing down : they fly off 
at too great tangents from the arc of thought which 
I am at present endeavouring to describe. But I 
think I can now venture upon a definition of what 
has all along been the end of my inquiry — Conver- 
sion, or the New Birth. 

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RELIGION 

"I have pointed out what the ordinary conscious- 
ness and ordinary knowledge of the Eternal is; I 
have shown what knowledge and what conscious- 
ness it is possible to have. I think I have made it 
clear that, though it may be difficult to draw an 
exact line of demarcation in particular cases between 
superficial and fundamental knowledge (between 
knowledge about and knowledge of) that the two 
kinds are distinct, and in their main features easily 
distinguishable. I think I have also shown that 
the same is true of the two kinds (or degrees) of 
consciousness; — that though a shallow conscious- 
ness may have various degrees of depth, and may 
be inspired by motives of various degrees of noble- 
ness, there is still a marked difference between 
this class of consciousness and that deeper kind of 
which, I have endeavoured to show, history proves 
the human spirit to be capable. 

"The question whether it is a difference in kind, 
or only in degree, I will consider presently. But 
since there is a difference, and since all men at first 
(i. e. in childhood), and most men throughout life, 
only attain to various degrees of the shallower con- 
sciousness, a transition to the deeper consciousness 
must be possible and necessary, and it has, in many 
undoubted cases, actually taken place. And this 
transition — this change — is conversion, or the New 
Birth. 

"Let me try and put it in a formal definition. 

"Conversion is that change which takes place in a 
man when he apprehends the fundamental charac- 
teristic of the Personality of which his own person- 
ality makes him conscious, and begins to feel to- 

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wards Him that deepest emotion of which his nature 
is capable- — love ; being thereby led to conform will- 
ingly, joyfully, and with intelligent obedience to 
those intimations of His will of which he possesses 
knowledge; inasmuch as he recognizes them to be 
the true laws of life."* 

"The last two clauses of this definition suggest 
tempting fields of thought, into which, however, I 
must not now wander. I will only note for future 
expansion : — 

"( i) That fundamental knowledge of God's cha- 
racter, and love towards Him does not imply full 
knowledge of His Will. That knowledge is pro- 
gressive, a continual 'following on to know' more 
fully ;— herein differing from the knowledge which 
those who have not undergone the New Birth have 
of God's Will, i. c. their knowledge of the moral 
law, — of what is right and what is wrong — a kind 
of knowledge which does not develop, but, on the 

* "Those who advocate the theory of the relativity of 
all human knowledge would wish me to modify this by 
saying 'the most fundamental which man is capable of 
apprehending.' I cannot discuss that point now; and ex- 
cept as a piece of doubtfully beneficial mental gymnastics, 
I doubt whether it is worth discussing at all. It cannot 
possibly be decided whether what is ultimate truth to us 
is the ultimate truth of truth. What good can it do to 
imagine an absolute which we can never know, behind 
truth as we know it? 

"For my own part (since an opinion on the subject one 
must have, and putting it down can do no harm), I believe 
that the knowledge we have of the Eternal is 'absolute' 
knowledge. The Fact of facts is Living Love. There is 
no deeper depth. Comprehend it we cannot; apprehend 
it we can." Thus my friend in parentheses. 

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contrary, is rather apt to depreciate; especially in 
those who belong to class I. above. 

"(2) That when the Law-giver is known to be 
good, the law must be known to be good also, and 
necessary; not arbitrary; — live-giving, and joy-pro- 
ducing. 

"And now with regard to the nature of this New 
Birth (its effects I have several times tried to de- 
scribe, but have always ended with the conviction 
'that they are indescribable — that they must be felt, 
and the life lived, before it and they can be under- 
stood). How is the change best described? Is it 
a change in degree of life merely, or is it a change 
in kind ? 

"The first thing to be noted in considering this 
question — a fact which assuredly should be allowed 
very considerable weight — is the term which Jesus 
used when describing it. 

"He called it a 'New Birth.' This, I think 
plainly indicates what answer He would have given 
to my question. He could hardly have found a 
stronger term, or one which denotes a more radical 
change. If the objection is raised that the phrase 
'born anew' only occurs in the Fourth Gospel, and 
cannot be asserted confidently to have been used 
by Jesus, I reply that the statement recorded in 
Matt, xviii. 3, 'Except ye turn and become as little 
children, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom 
of heaven,' implies a no less radical change. The 
weight of Jesus' testimony must undoubtedly be 
placed in favour of the idea that the change is not 
merely one of degree of consciousness, but one of 
kind. 

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RELIGION 

"But is there no further testimony? Is there 
no human experience which approaches to it — no 
deepening of our human consciousness, no expan- 
sion of our being, to which we can liken it ? I think 
there is. 

"I have already referred to that change which 
takes place in the physical part of our nature when 
manhood is reached; when the circle of our being 
is enlarged by the addition of another instinct, 
making us conscious of new relations, opening our 
eyes to a new and hitherto unsuspected (or only 
dimly suspected) world of thought and emotion. 

"The terrible abuse of this instinct of which 
humanity has been guilty — the hell of thought and 
feeling which is associated with it — has almost 
wholly annihilated in men's minds even the possi- 
bility of conceiving it to be a noble instinct; has 
almost wholly obscured all true apprehension of its 
significance ; has almost blinded men to the wisdom, 
and beneficence, and love displayed by their Creator 
in its bestowment. 

"This abuse also prevents one from speaking of 
it freely, or from employing it to illustrate — as it, 
I think, alone can adequately illustrate — the subject 
upon which I am now entering. Therefore, I will 
not speak further of this Heaven-bestowed sacra- 
ment of love. But I must point out how the 
fact of this addition to, and expansion of, our 
physical nature, increases the possibility, at any 
rate, of a similar expansion of our spiritual 
nature. 

"If the human race never reached the age at 
which this instinct develops, how inconceivable and 

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impossible would all that world which it opens up 
be to it! And seeing that this expansion of the 
physical nature does take place, and seeing that in 
some men a closely analagous expansion of the 
spiritual nature occurs, is there not reason — some 
reason, at any rate — for supposing that the majority 
of the race are still spiritually children, undeveloped, 
with enormous possibilities of life still lying dor- 
mant within them? 

"But leaving this analogy of our physical nature, 
let us turn to its counterpart in deeper regions of our 
being. 

"Love! the sweet, pure love between man and 
woman ; who is ever tired of listening to that theme ? 
Who will dare to place a limit to its transforming 
influence on the nature? Who has fathomed its 
depths ? 

"Tempting as this theme is for a digression, I 
confine myself for the present to the matter in hand 
— the light, namely, which this supreme experience 
— the awakening of love — can afford us in arriving 
at sound conclusions concerning the nature of the 
New Birth. 

"Is the change which takes place in a man when 
this divine emotion is stirred within him to be 
adequately described as a change in the degree of 
his previous consciousness, or is it the dawn of a 
new kind ? Are the thoughts, the emotions, the life 
which is roused within him when his hopes for all 
the future years centre in the question whether an- 
other being regards him with similar feelings — 
whether another heart vibrates to that new, sweet, 
astonishing note which has been struck in his — are 

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these I say, but a deepening and expansion of the 
thoughts, and emotions, and life which he has 
known before ? 

"And when the bond has been struck, when 
the sacred path of wedded life has been entered 
upon, and the fidelity and devotion of years has 
deepened and intensified a hundredfold the bliss of 
that union of heart with heart which began so long 
ago; is it still only in degree that his life differs 
from that sum of conscious experience which was 
his before the hand of Love struck the chords of 
his being, and made them vibrate, in strains of un- 
utterable sweetness, in response to her master- 
touch? Those who have known what true love 
is (alas! how few), true love — which deepens and 
sweetens with every succeeding year, and still shows 
an infinite expanse ahead — an infinite universe of 
undeveloped possibilities, an infinite heaven of unat- 
tained communion — will not, I think, deem it ade- 
quate to define it as an intensified degree of their 
previous consciousness — of their previous life. 

"Rather will they say, 'I did not know what life 
was before I felt the touch of love ; since then the 
world has been a changed world ; behold, all things 
have become new.' 

"And if we can speak thus of human love — the 
love which nourishes itself on a finite spirit, shall we 
not much more speak in similar terms of that change 
which comes upon the soul when it awakes to the 
consciousness that Infinite Love is opening out its 
arms to receive it — nay, holds it already and always 
in its embrace — is brooding over it with an infinite 
passion of delight and longing, and with trembling 

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eagerness is striving to arouse it to response, by- 
kisses of ineffable tenderness? When that truth 
bursts in upon the spirit, or dawns upon it like the 
gradual awakening of a summer's day, is it merely 
the intensification of the old consciousness which it 
produces ? Is it merely an added warmth to the old 
life? Nay! Life was not life before, it was an 
existence, a dream. Then only, when he has felt 
the touch of the Divine Love upon him, does man 
awake; then only, when the New Birth is consum- 
mated, does he begin to live. 

"If any one who has never known what love, 
human or Efrvine, is, were to read these musings of 
mine, I doubt not that he would be of the opinion 
that the impetus of thought had carried me away 
from sober truth into the region of cloudy imagin- 
ings and baseless fancies. 

"I cannot help it. That life is so good may well 
seem impossible to those who have never awakened 
to life. 

"But, in case any one should read these notes of 
mine when I am gone, I here record, that what I 
have written above is to me the expression of the 
soberest truth ; an unvarnished, unexaggerated state- 
ment of what life is, as I have seen, and felt, and 
known it, during my years of mortal consciousness." 

Here this long and interesting note ends ; but 
the following, which immediately succeeds it in my 
friend's note-book, is evidently intended to be sup- 
plementary to it. 

"Heaven never works without instruments ; never 
acomplishes ends without means. 

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RELIGION 

"It may not be always possible to trace these to 
their source, in fact it cannot be possible. Life be- 
gins and ends in mystery; only a few links of the 
chain of causation are visible, only for a few steps 
can we trace the footsteps of God before they dis- 
appear in the Divine dark. 

"But that is no reason for refusing to trace them 
as far as we can. As far as our finite minds can 
understand the workings of the Infinite Mind, and 
plumb the depths of infinite truth we are not only 
justified in making the attempt, but bound to 
make it. 

" This thought came to me while pondering the 
question of the means by which the New Birth is 
effected in men, and the manner of its accomplish- 
ment. I have made the statement in a previous 
note that all those who have in the Christian cen- 
turies attained to fundamental knowledge of God, 
and to that deeper consciousness of Him in which 
love is the controlling emotion, have derived their 
knowledge from one source — have all had their love 
kindled from one heart — from the Man Christ 
Jesus. But whence did He obtain His knowledge? 
At what flame was His love kindled ? Ah ! at this 
point the track disappears, the chain of causation 
vanishes into the unknown. 'From God — from the 
Infinite Wisdom and Love,' we say; but that light 
is too dazzling to be beheld by human eyes. 

"Many interesting thoughts suggest themselves 
on that subject; but I do not want now to follow 
the line of thought which moves upwards into those 
regions of mystery, but the one which moves down- 
wards, and keeps within the limits of the sphere in 

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RELIGION 

which the mind can legitimately claim to exercise 
itself. 

"The question I wish to consider is this : How, 
so far as we are capable of ascertaining, is the New 
Birth brought about in men? what are the instru- 
ments which Heaven makes use of in order to pro- 
duce this great effect? 

"It is certain that love alone can beget love. The 
capacity may be there — indeed, must be there — but 
only the kindling touch of love can awaken it to 
life. 

"In the case of human love we can say with cer- 
tainty that the capacity and desire to love and to be 
loved is present in every heart, though how the 
diffused emotion crystallizes round one particular 
object is a mystery beyond our fathoming. 

"But even human love has many degrees, and 
varies greatly in fulness and intensity. Can we 
account for these differences? Partly, I think, we 
can. It is universally recognized now that there 
are two main factors in the life of every individual 
— constitution and environment — and that the man 
is the product of these two. I do not want to dis- 
cuss either of these in detail now, but simply to con- 
sider their bearing on the question in hand. 

"We can say very little concerning the causes 
which produce variations in constitution. It is an 
undoubted fact that temperament varies. The 
natural capacity for loving is much greater in some 
than it is in others, but why it is we cannot say. 
Of late years it has been recognized that heredity 
has a great deal to do with the matter, but how far 
its influence extends, and what other influences are 

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RELIGION 

at work in determining the limits of a man's ca- 
pacity we cannot say. 

" Still we know enough about the facts of hered- 
ity to be able to say that there is much more likeli- 
hood that the children of good and loving parents 
will have good dispositions and loving natures, than 
the children of bad parents, and those who have 
little or no love for each other. 

"And I think we can say further (applying this 
to my main consideration), that the children of 
good parents are far more likely to attain to the 
New Birth than those who are the offspring of love- 
less marriages. 'The seed of the righteous shall 
inherit the earth' — a far-reaching truth! 'The 
children of Thy servants shall continue, and their 
seed shall be established before Thee.' Yes, that 
is one way by which God's kingdom comes. 

"But we know so little as yet about this matter 
that it is better to leave it after saying that much. 

"Concerning the other factor, however — environ- 
ment — we know and can say more. Let us con- 
sider its connection with the new New Birth — how 
far its influence may be traced as an agent in the 
accomplishment of this result. I think that, broadly 
speaking, I am stating the truth when I say that 
the love which is roused in any human heart — 
whether that love has as its object another human 
being, or the Divine Being — corresponds in purity 
and intensity to the purity and intensity of the love 
of which that heart has conscious experience in its 
intercourse with other hearts. The great differ- 
ences in temperament to which I have alluded above 
greatly obscure this law, and would doubtless cause 

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RELIGION 

many people to hesitate long before they accepted 
it as true. 

"For there are so many cases in which souls 
blossom with rare beauty amid the most adverse 
circumstances, and so many others in which the 
purest and tenderest influences seem to have had 
no beneficial effect, that it may well seem to many 
impossible to discover any law governing these vari- 
ations. They may justifiably hesitate to assign any 
important influence to environment when so many 
exceptions to the general law of its effects present 
themselves. 

"This of course must continue to be the case as 
llong as temperament remains to so large an extent 
an unknown quantity. Nevertheless the uncertainty 
which it introduces does not prevent us from arriv- 
ing at certain definite conclusions concerning the 
[influence of environment on character, and more 
especially its influence on the remarkable experience 
I am now considering — the New Birth. 

"Nature furnishes us with an analogy which will 
help us in the endeavour to ascertain the quality and 
magnitude of this influence. Indeed, I am inclined 
to think that it is more than an analogy — that it is 
rather a parallel truth. I refer to the influence of 
environment on the growth of seeds. 

"No one will deny that, in the case of seeds, both 
the factors I have mentioned — constitution and en- 
vironment — are present ; nor will any one deny how 
powerful the influence of the latter is. 

"Take two seeds, which so far as can be ascer- 
tained are exactly alike, and place one in a favour- 
able environment — in good soil, supplied with water, 

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RELIGION 

protected from cold winds, and where it will get 
plenty of sunshine ; and plant the other where these 
favourable influences are not available. The result 
will be manifest from the moment of their appear- 
ance as plants. 

"Or again, select the largest and, so far as you 
can judge, the most promising seed you can find, 
and also a small and unpromising one, and plant the 
former in an unfavourable environment, and the lat- 
ter in a favourable one, and see whether this one 
does not attain to a development which rivals or 
surpasses that of its (constituionally) more fa- 
voured brother. 

''There is no need to carry out the comparison 
further, since the influence of environment on the 
lives of plants is universally acknowledged. I only 
add that, of course in cases in which the environ- 
ment is the same, or equally favourable, but natural 
'capabilities vary, the differences in the results 
which are due to the influence of this factor will 
be clearly manifested. What I have been saying 
necessarily implies that a fairer flower will result 
from the growth of a seed with high potentialities 
in a favourable environment than from the growth 
in a similar environment of one possessing smaller 
potentialities of life. 

"I need hardly apply all this to the statement 
I have made concerning the development of love. 
If the truth of the comparison be admitted (and its 
legitimacy can hardly be called in question), then 
it must also be admitted that the natural capacities 
of any one for loving and being loved (whether 
these capacities are great or small) are much more 

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RELIGION 

likely to be developed when the individual is sur- 
rounded by good and loving influences than when 
these are absent. 

"And now to come to the bearing of all this on 
the problem of the New Birth. Life alone can 
beget life, and only love can kindle love. How, 
then, is that supreme love, which is the distinguish- 
ing feature of the life which follows on the New 
Birth, kindled in the heart ? 

"I have said that originally it was kindled from 
one Heart; but I have also said that Heaven never 
works without instruments. What instruments does 
Heaven make use of now to bring about the New 
Birth — now, when we can only learn from fragmen- 
tary records the quality of that Heart — can only 
indirectly gain knowledge of it, not feel its direct 
and living influence. (I am endeavouring to keep 
'dear of the region of mystery, and, moreover, am 
dealing with the time in the life-history of the 
individual before the Divine Love is directly known, 
and am only seeking to ascertain how it comes to 
"be known.) 

"I am certain that there are such instruments, 
and that they are the living hearts of men ; by 
which I mean the hearts of living men — those, 
namely, who have themselves undergone the ex- 
perience called 'the New Birth,' and who know what 
true life is. 

" 'My little children, of whom I travail in birth 
■again until Christ be formed in you,' wrote one who 
at least knew as much about these matters as any 
.one ; and again : 'though ye have ten thousand teach- 

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RELIGION 

ers, yet have ye not many fathers, for in Jesus Christ 
I begat you through the gospel.' 

"Yes, thus does Heaven ordain that the flame 
of Divine Love shall be transmitted from heart to 
heart; thus has it been transmitted for eighteen 
hundred years. There have always been some, even 
in the darkest times, in whose hearts it has glowed. 
God has never left Himself without witnesses in 
the world. That 'light of the knowledge of the 
glory of God' which first shone in the face of Jesus 
Christ has never ceased to shine in other faces since. 
Like the perpetual fire kept burning on the sacred 
altars, the Divine Flame came down from heaven 
to the shrine of human hearts, and though often- 
times it has burnt low, it has never since entirely 
gone out. Since it came the world has never been 
without some of that fire — the fire which was mys- 
teriously, divinely kindled in the heart of Jesus 
Christ. 

"I am tempted to expand on this theme. Much 
could be said about the way in which this living 
flame has been kept burning as the centuries have 
moved on ; in spite of the decay of the early en- 
thusiasm, the strifes about doctrines, the wreck of 
the Roman empire, the gloom of the dark ages, and 
the foul vapours arising from a hierarchy which 
sank continually to lower levels of corruption ; in 
spite, too, of the shock of the Reformation, and all 
that has followed therefrom. But I must pass over 
all that now. 

"On one point, however, it seems appropriate to 
say a few words, in order to bring my present line 
of thought to a fitting conclusion, namely, the most 

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RELIGION 

natural and appropriate way in which the New 
Birth should be accomplished. 

"I have already hinted at the answer which, I 
think, is the correct one to give to this question, 
and what I have just written seems to confirm the 
suggestion I then made, i. e. that the influences and 
training to which a child is subjected in his home 
ought to (and will and do in many cases) constitute 
a natural and sufficient preparation not only for 
the duties and responsibilities of manhood, in its 
relations with the world, but also for manhood in 
its relations with the Eternal. One could write 
much sorrowfully, as well as much hopefully, on 
this subject. For how few are the homes in which, 
from the love and affection which the parents dis- 
play towards each other, and the light of the Divine 
Love which glows in their hearts and shines in 
their faces, the children can learn with any degree 
of accuracy what true love is ! How seldom can 
children step from the threshold of their earthly 
home with the consciousness that they are not about 
to wander in the mazes of a labyrinth to which they 
have no clue, but to explore the mansions of their 
Father's House! 

"When we see under what far different influ- 
ences most children grow up, what far different 
types of life most parents manifest, from that one 
and only true type of the Eternal which we have 
had given us in Jesus; when we see with what 
poverty of equipment for life's battle the rising 
generation is being sent forth to the fight, one 
ceases to wonder that so many are worsted in the 
struggle — one is not surprised that the progress of 

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RELIGION 

humanity is so slow. But one does wonder at the 
boldness and the patience of the Creator : — His 
boldness, I say, in venturing to create a race of be- 
ings which along such a path must be led to life; 
His patience in bearing with their sins and follies,, 
and in waiting so long for the development of that 
life, and for the awakening of that love which He 
has created them to enjoy — the full possession of 
which by the creatures He has dowered so nobly and 
loves so intensely will alone satisfy Him, whose 
first, best name is Love. 

"The importance of the home environment in 
determining the character of the man greatly needs 
to be insisted on; for the majority of those who 
now undertake the duties and responsibilities of 
parenthood display a deplorable — one may even say 
a criminal — ignorance in these matters, the penalty 
for which they, and their offspring, and the world 
have perforce to pay. For God, in His mercy and 
love, never exempts mankind from the penalties 
which He has attached to all violations of His laws. 
He is never less than just. 

"But I have, I hope, written enough to show 
how important environment is in its influence on 
a developing life — how important is the warmth 
and brightness of the sun of love for the arousing 
in budding souls of that deepest, divinest instinct 
of all life — the instinct, the passion of love. When 
the homes of earth are lit up, not only with the 
flame of human love, but with the light of that 
Divine love which may be kindled from the heart 
of Jesus Christ, so that in very deed heaven may 
lie about the infancy, and shine in unclouded splen- 

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RELIGION 

dour on the childhood of the rising race, then may 
we hope to see the normal course of human develop- 
ment fulfilled, and our sons go forth to the battle 
of life with the assurance of victory on their faces, 
because they have the unconquerable strength of 
love in their hearts. But as it is — as this dark, sad 
world actually is — I fear we must still continue 
to see multitudes ushered into life foredoomed to 
defeat rather than pledged to victory. We must 
for the present be content to see here and there 
one or two of God's children rejoicing in His love, 
while the rest remain unilluminated, uninspired, ig- 
norant of the infinite fulness of life which is their 
birthright. 

"But let us possess our souls in patience. Let 
us wait in faith and hope till the vast plans of the 
Eternal are fully worked out. Let us endure (as 
He endures) to see the pain and the heavy travail 
of humanity. Let us ever confidently believe and 
hope that the hosts of men are being marshalled by 
the unerring skill of the Eternal towards a Promised 
Land, towards the fulness of an endless life tuned 
to the keynote of love; and that one day, all to the 
very last laggard and straggler, will be assembled 
within the gates of joy, within the haven of rest." 



[231] 



CHAPTER VII 

religion — (continued) 

The Moral Sense 

"That man possesses the power of self-determi- 
nation — a free will — which enables him to decide 
between various contending motives, and to pursue 
one or another of many widely divergent courses 
of action, is a fact which, though it has sometimes 
been disputed in the study, has never been doubted 
in practical life. 

"The whole of mankind's active life is based on 
that assumption ; it turns on that pivot. 

"The denial of this truth, if worked out to its 
logical conclusions in life, would produce anarchy; 
it would make social life impossible, and degrade 
man below the level of the brutes. 

"This has been practically admitted by those who 
have denied this axiom, inasmuch as they have 
never ventured to carry their theory to its logical 
conclusions — have never ventured to act upon it 
consistently. They have always brought in and 
acknowledged the point in dispute by admitting 
what is a direct consequence of freedom — responsi- 
bility; if not openly, yet at any rate practically, 
under some such disguise as the acknowledgment 
of the right of society to enact laws and to enforce 
them with pains and penalties. 

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RELIGION 

"Of course, whether we regard this question of 
the freedom of the will as the starting-point or as 
the goal of thought, there can be no agreement 
between those who take opposite sides. In the 
former case, those who refuse to admit it as a 
premise cannot be expected to admit the conclusions 
which are deduced from it ; in the latter case, either 
some of the facts on which the one or the other 
conclusion is based must be disputed, or they must 
be interpreted in wholly different ways. From this 
watershed of thought the streams flow in opposite 
directions, and no ingenuity or skill can ever unite 
them. 

"The question, on which side of this great moun- 
tain range of thought the streams can alone find 
their way to the ocean of truth, permits, to my 
thinking, of only one answer. The axiom of the 
freedom of the will enables me to formulate a theory 
of life which does violence to no intuition, gives 
the lie to no conviction, quenches no aspiration ; 
while the necessitarian's position seems only to lead 
to marshes and stagnant pools, and to low levels of 
thought, where faith and hope are stifled by the 
clammy mists of doubt. 

"I can understand the eargerness of scientific 
inquirers to bring the whole of nature, including 
human nature, within the domain of law. But law 
must be induced from all the facts with which 
experience acquaints us — not merely from some of 
them. It will not do to assume that human nature 
brings no new factors into the problem before 
human nature has been thoroughly, and I may add 
most reverently, studied. The probabilities, on the 

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RELIGION 

face of it, are that human nature does bring in some 
new factors. The hypothesis that man, who can 
control the forces of Nature, and wrest her secrets 
from her, has no elements in him of a higher order 
than those displayed in the phenomenal world, and 
is subject to no laws except those to which the 
material universe is subjected, is one which is 
stamped with all the marks of improbability — a 
hypothesis which should only be accepted sorrow- 
fully after all others have been demonstrated to be 
untenable, not (as is too often the case in these 
days) assumed before investigation has commenced. 
"He who will, with an earnest desire to find 
Truth, enter the field of investigation which human 
nature presents, will find the reign of law no less 
universal there than elsewhere. But let him not 
enter it with his mind full of preconceptions derived 
from the study of natural phenomena; let him not 
expect to find such laws as he finds among these. 
Let him be prepared to find in Heaven's crowning 
work phenomena which he does not find elsewhere, 
and, consequently, new and strange indications of 
the reign of law in this higher sphere, of which 
God's lower works give no hint. Let his precon- 
ceptions, if he must have them, be derived from 
the religious teachers, the seers, the poets — the men 
who have thought grandly and nobly of our race, 
and who have been the true scientific investiga- 
tors of human nature. Then, and not till then, 
will he be in a position to apprehend rightly the 
truths which this new region contains. For man 
cannot be prejudged by 'natural' standards; he must 
be studied by himself. His own instincts, intui- 

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RELIGION 

tions, powers, and capacities must be accepted as the 
finger-posts which point the way to Truth, The 
truth here, I am convinced, is discoverable, if only 
the man who seeks for it keeps his mind free from 
prejudice, and is careful not to impair the powers of 
his mental vision by fixing his attention too intently 
and too exclusively on physical phenomena. 

"Starting, then, from the axiom of the freedom 
of the will, let us see what manifestations of the 
reign of law are naturally to be expected in this 
region, and whether facts justify our anticipations. 

"That man is not self-created, but has been 
brought into existence by a Power outside him, is a 
fact too obvious to admit of doubt. 

"Now we cannot, without doing violence to all 
the laws of thought, and without surrendering the 
axiom on which the whole of scientific knowledge 
is based, conceive of effects without also conceiving 
of an adequate cause. If, therefore, man has a free 
will, and if it is certain that he did not create him- 
self, we cannot avoid the conclusion that the Power 
which created him is possessed of a will ; for other- 
wise we are driven to conclude that the Universe 
has evolved something greater than itself. 

"But if the Power which made us has will, and 
if that will is not capricious, but continually ener- 
gizes in fixed and constant ways, we should natur- 
ally expect to find within us intimations that this 
is the case — a 'law of will,' not, of course, enforc- 
ing obedience and reacting on disobedience in the 
same way as natural laws do, since the very nature 
of will forbids its being subject to that kind of 
necessity, but — under the conditions which will im- 

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poses — putting in its claim for obedience no less 
majestically than do the other laws of the universe. 

"If we find such a 'law of will' within us, not 
only does our axiom concerning the freedom of 
the will receive a confirmation which removes it 
for ever beyond the region of controversy, but the 
desire of scientific thought to extend the reign of 
law to all spheres of life receives both justification 
and satisfaction, and human nature is demonstrated 
equally with physical nature to be comprehended 
within the rule of an orderly Power, that works 
and wills with the strength of infinite might and 
with the constancy of infinite perfection. 

"Now, such an intimation of a 'law of will' 
speaking with an authority which cannot be ques- 
tioned, and claiming the explicit obedience of our 
wills, I am convinced that we have — in what we 
call 'conscience.' 

"The voice of conscience — that instantaneous and 
instinctive verdict which is pronounced within us 
on every act which requires the exercise of our wills 
— that intuition which enables, nay, compels us to 
distinguish quality in conduct — fulfils all the re- 
quirements which a scientific investigator, anxious 
to annex this region also to the realm of law, can 
demand. 

"It is the direct witness to the nature of the will 
of the Power which made us. It testifies to the 
glorious truth that law reigns in the very centre of 
the Being of the Eternal — that even His will can 
be known, and confidently rested on as change- 
lessly perfect. It is the guide of our noblest and 
most godlike faculty, directing it into the way of 

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life. It shows how correspondence with our environ- 
ment can be accomplished throughout the entire 
range of our faculties ; how our wills and the Infin- 
ite Will can become one. Thus free will and con- 
science bear mutual testimony to one another, and 
both testify to the existence of a Living Will with- 
out us. If we had not free wills, conscience would 
be inexplicable : how could the soul avoid shipwreck 
on one or other of the innumerable rocks or shal- 
lows, or in one of the unnumbered whirlpools of 
existence, if there were no magnetic needle to guide 
volition on that unknown sea? And how account 
for either except on the supposition of an Eternal 
Will who has endowed us with some of His own 
superlative energy, and in the voice of conscience 
calls us to use it as He uses it, to live as He lives, 
to co-operate with Him, and to share in the bound- 
less energies of His infinite and perfect life? 

Of all the promises and potencies of life which 
our nature contains, conscience is the herald of the 
grandest and most illimitable. For it testifies to 
us of an environment (and at the same time bears 
witness to our capability to correspond with it) to 
whose infinity thought can place no bounds — to 
possibilities of life which are measureless. This 
environment is a Living Will. Conscience bears 
direct testimony to the quality — the character — of 
that Living Will which environs our wills. It is 
the stamp of the nature of the Eternal imprinted 
on our natures. Through conscience we make ac- 
quaintance with the loftiest and most fundamental 
of the modes of the Eternal which our being ena- 
bles us to know. Our nature stops there ; the possi- 

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bilities of life extend no further. If there are any 
deeper depths in the Eternal than that Living Will 
which we know through conscience, they must re- 
main for ever unknown and unknowable; unless, 
indeed, new faculties are developed in us which 
enable us to fathom them. At present we can know 
and can imagine nothing beyond or behind Person- 
ality. This is the ultimate environment of our 
being: correspondence with it will give us all that 
thought can imagine, all that conscience can de- 
mand, all that heart can crave. In such corre- 
spondence will be found satisfaction for our utmost 
need. To find and to live in the knowledge of the 
truth concerning the Will and Character of the 
Great Personality who environs us — in other words, 
to know the living and true God — is to find life in 
all its fulness and in all its blessedness. But at 
present the correspondence with this environment 
to which man has attained is notoriously defective. 
The call to life which conscience utters has hitherto 
been almost entirely disregarded; the possibilities 
which it discloses have been either despised or over- 
looked. Men have not lived — in this deepest sense 
of corresponding with this most fundamental En- 
vironment with which the moral sense makes us 
acquainted. This vast region of Reality has 
remained almost entirely unexplored. The world 
has been dead to it; and it is not too much to say 
that by neglecting this region, and by attempting 
to follow paths of activity which diverge from the 
broad highway of the eternal activities of the Real, 
man has missed life. He has attempted the impos- 
sible task of effecting other adjustments between 

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his nature and the Infinite Truth than fact will 
permit of. He has chosen other guides for his 
volitions than the one with which his Creator has en- 
dowed him; and his Creator who will not be 
mocked, and who, in mercy, rewards every man 
according to his work, has required him to reap as 
he has sown. 

"The true and scientific way of finding Truth in 
this region is by the method of discovery — the 
inductive method — which has produced such bril- 
liant results in other regions. 

"If any man wants to find out the truth con- 
cerning will — if he wants to demonstrate the truth- 
fulness or falsity of the intimations which the moral 
sense conveys to him — let him subject them to the 
test of experience. Let him unswervingly act in 
harmony with these intimations ; let him always 
choose the noblest motive for action; let him be 
true to his moral instincts : he will not be long in 
finding out whether they are deceiving him or not, 
whether conscience leads to darkness or to 
light, whether the path he is following becomes 
broader and plainer to discern as he proceeds, or 
leads to mazy labyrinths in which both he and it 
are lost. The three tests of truth are light, life, 
and joy. Fidelity to truth cannot fail to bring 
more light concerning it, a fuller sense of life in 
corresponding with it, and consequently a fuller 
sense of joy — which must always result from the 
right use of faculties. 

"Now, I venture to assert that no man ever has 
followed, or ever can follow, the intuitions of con- 
science without receiving this reward. And this is 

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the only way of proving whether conscience is a 
true guide or not. If any man will will as con- 
science directs, he shall know of its teaching whether 
it be of God (i.e. whether it is true) or whether it 
speaks of itself. 

"There are regions of truth in this direction 
which remain almost unknown to the majority of 
our race. There is a promise of life here which as 
yet is almost wholly unrealized. Conscience calls 
us to oneness of life with the Eternal Life of the 
Universe; it is the witness to the fact that we are 
the sons of God. 

"Thought fails us in our endeavour to appre- 
hend the full splendour of that truth; imagination 
cannot picture the fulness of that life. That the 
gift of life bestowed on us by Heaven should be 
so measureless, is a fact, but one which cannot be 
comprehended. Even the faint and partial realiza- 
tion of the truth of which we are at present cap- 
able, strikes us dumb in an ecstasy of wonder and 
of joy. O Eternal Spirit, is Thy bounty so great? 

"The attempt to analyze the contents of con- 
science is one which is attended with extreme and 
peculiar difficulty. For motives, in which inhere 
those peculiar qualities on which the moral sense 
pronounces judgment, are of almost infinite variety 
and complexity, being capable of a fineness of 
shading which almost defies analysis, by the admix- 
ture, in ever-varying proportions, of impulses de- 
rived from the different parts of our complex 
nature. 

"Moreover — and this is a fact of considerable 
importance, and one which plays no small part in 

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the lives of the great majority of men — heredity 
and early training leave their ineffaceable marks on 
the consciences of most men ; and in a peculiar way. 

"For though analysis brings us finally to motives 
as the objects of the intuitive judgments of the 
moral sense, this is by no means evident at first 
sight. To ordinary observation conscience seems 
to pronounce judgment, not on motives but on acts; 
and this view is apparently confirmed by the ex- 
plicit commands and prohibitions of the moral and 
civil law. It is not in their earlier years — fre- 
quently it is not even in their later ones — that men 
are able to distinguish clearly between acts, and 
the motives which prompt them. They judge acts 
by whatever code of law they have adopted or — 
so it would be more correct to say in the majority 
of cases — drifted under; they only very imperfectly 
recognize, when they recognize at all, the import- 
ance of the underlying motives. 

"This would matter little if their code of law 
embraced the sum total of acts which motives can 
result in, and assigned to each its appropriate re- 
ward or penalty; and if every motive had one and 
only one appropriate act in which it should result, 
and no valid reason could be assigned for giving it 
a different embodiment in deeds. 

"But this is not the case. No code of law can 
embrace the whole sphere of human action. And 
every motive, in the great variety of circumstances 
in which it may present itself, may be appropriately 
embodied in many different acts. And such in- 
evitable elements of fallibility as lack of knowledge 
and immaturity of judgment must always be present 

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in every act, rendering it for ever impossible for 
lis to expect, or even to conceive of one which is 
ideally perfect. 

"The disposition to regard conscience as the ad- 
judicator of acts and not as the discerner of mo- 
tives seems to be partly the result of that wise 
ordinance of Nature which decrees that the higher 
faculties in man shall be the latest to develop. That 
which is natural comes first, afterwards that which 
is spiritual. Consequently it is on externals that 
attention is first fixed. We learn to appraise the 
value of acts long before we are able to discern the 
motives which have prompted them. 

"Hence the 'being under law' is a condition of 
things natural to and inevitable in that state of 
immaturity which belongs to our early years. We 
must be 'under law' till such time as that late-devel- 
oping faculty — the moral sense — has gained suf- 
ficient strength to undertake the guidance of the 
will; till then we must live by rules, not by prin- 
ciples, and are constrained to judge acts, not 
motives. 

"But in the case of the majority of men the 
moral sense never does gain sufficient strength to 
make this advance ; or, at any rate, it only partially 
makes it. Its development is arrested. It does not 
boldly take its seat on the throne of man's being, 
and there royally arbitrate and rule. It clings to 
precedents, pronounces in accordance with the strict 
and literal interpretation of rules and customs, and 
is fearful of the smallest departure from estab- 
lished ordinances. This, indeed, is the chief reason 
why most men imagine that conscience judges acts 

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and not motives. They never get beyond the state 
•of childhood; they never take the step which frees 
from bondage to law, by yielding their wills to the 
guidance of the faculty which Heaven has appointed 
for that purpose. 

"Into the question of the causes which have led 
to this state of things I cannot now enter. I will 
simply note here one of its inevitable consequences 
— a peculiarity of conscience as it testifies to most 
men which produces most important effects in their 
lives. It is this : that their conceptions of right 
and wrong are arbitrarily associated with many 
acts, the rightness or wrongness of which solely 
depends on the motives which prompt their per- 
formance, — acts which at one time fittingly and ap- 
propriately expressed genuine feelings, and orig- 
nated from noble motives, but which now are fos- 
sils, punctiliously but unintelligently performed — ■ 
without the living emotion and the noble incentive 
which originally brought them to the birth. 

"It is hardly possible to overestimate the power 
and importance of the influence which these petri- 
fied motives exert on the lives of the majority of 
men. In some cases the man's life consists of 
nothing else than a chain of laborious efforts to 
conform to their requirements, and he lives in con- 
tinual fear lest he may have neglected some duty 
which they prescribe, or may not have fully per- 
formed it. 

"History is full of instances in which these life- 
less conventions have pressed upon the lives of in- 
dividuals or of nations with an almost intolerable 
weight. They have bound men in bondage too 

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RELIGION 

grievous to be borne, and have not infrequently 
produced a most violent reaction, in which all au- 
thority has been shaken off, all law repudiated, 
and inclination and passion have come to be re- 
garded as the only proper guides of action. Ter- 
rible and deplorable as the results of such a revolt 
inevitably are, the revolt itself is an indubitable 
evidence of life ; and the wildest throes which be- 
token life are preferable to the stillness of death. 

"The moral sense is the faculty which enables 
us to discern quality in motives. This, I think, is 
the most satisfactory definition which can be given 
of this instinct. All psychological analysis brings 
us finally to this intuitive judgment of the moral 
sense : 'This motive is nobler than that ; I give no 
reasons ; it is/ 

"Psychology may indeed succeed in arranging all 
the motives, or springs of action, which influence 
the will in an approximately correct scale, according 
to their relative excellence ; but this can be done only 
by applying to them the intuitive judgment of the 
moral sense and recording its verdict. 

"But such a dogmatic assertion as this which 
the moral sense makes concerning the quality of 
motives must have its ground and justification in 
some fact outside ourselves. Its affirmations are 
wholly unintelligible unless we suppose that there 
is a region of truth in the Non-Ego to which it 
testifies — with which it is in harmony. Unless 
quality such as the moral sense bears witness to is 
a characteristic of the Universe, the ground on 
which all our knowledge rests — i.e. that the testi- 
mony of our faculties is trustworthy — is cut away 

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RELIGION 

from under our feet. The only assumption ade- 
quate to account for the affirmations of the moral 
sense is this : that the Living Will without us, whose 
existence we are compelled to postulate in order 
to account for the possession of will by ourselves, 
has quality of that kind which the moral sense dis- 
cerns, i. e. Tightness. Hence the moral sense is the 
faculty which enables us to discern Truth in this re- 
gion — the highest region to which the capabilities 
of our nature enable us to explore. 

"Now, if what I have asserted with regard to the 
moral sense is true {i.e. that it intuitively discerns 
quality in motives), it follows that 'moral worth' 
and 'truth' are identical. The impression conveyed 
to us by the moral sense that one motive is more 
worthy of being acted upon than another, implies 
that it discerns in it more truth of that particular 
kind which it is its function to discern than in the 
other. The moral sense's affirmation of tight- 
ness' is equivalent to — is, indeed — an affirmation of 
truthfulness. It testifies — it cannot help testify- 
ing — to Truth It can no more help discerning 
that one motive contains more of the quality of 
tightness' than another, than the eye can help dif- 
ferences in the intensity of light. It cannot help 
resting with satisfaction on that motive, in prefer- 
ence to all others, which contains most of that qual- 
ity which it is its function to discern. 

"And if this is so, there is clearly no reason why 
by its aid this region of Truth should not be ex- 
plored to its limits. By the aid of the instinctive 
affirmations of the moral sense concerning the worth 
— the 'rightness' — of motives, it must be possible 

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RELIGION 

to find Truth, — the Eternal Truth concerning the 
character of the Eternal Will. For there is no rea- 
son for assigning any limit to the capacity of the 
moral sense to discern Truth. The absolute mo- 
tive of the Eternal Will must be the goal of the 
intuitions of this sublime faculty: on that alone 
can its approval finally rest with that perfect satis- 
faction which always results from the apprehension 
of satisfying Truth. 

"I can see no obstacle in the path of any scien- 
tific explorer in this field. I can see no reason why 
any man who takes as his guide the intuitions of 
the moral sense, and maintains an unswerving loy- 
alty to its intuitive judgments, should fail to arrive 
at satisfying Truth. All the conditions requisite 
for the attainment of scientific knowledge seem to 
me to be as much present here as they are in any 
other field. Truth is the faculty which has been 
given us for discernment of this kind of truth, and 
a faithful record of its judgments cannot fail, I am 
convinced, to result in the acquirement of true 
'knowledge' on this subject. 

"And, as a matter of fact, the world has explored 
this region of Truth long ago — explored it (I think 
it is not too much to say) even to its extremest 
limits. There is really not much left for scientific 
discovery to accomplish now in this region. 

"It is more than three thousand years since this, 
truth concerning motives was discovered and au- 
thoritatively proclaimed : 'Thou shalt love the Lord 
thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul,, 
and with all thy might;' and the world has not 
since found any motive of superior nobility — any 

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RELIGION 

motive to which the final judgment of the moral 
sense can turn with a feeling of completer satis- 
faction. 

"Even the Great Teacher of Nazareth did but 
reaffirm, in an age when the light which illumines 
the moral sense of the world had grown dim, this 
truth which had already been perceived ages be- 
fore. His moral teaching disclosed no truth which 
had not — either in His own or in other nations 
— been previously placed on record as the result of 
the intuitive moral judgments of men. We find 
nearly the whole of the moral teaching of the 
Sermon on the Mount in the Vedas; we find noth- 
ing either there or elsewhere in His teaching, as 
recorded in the Gospels, which goes beyond that 
'first and greatest commandment' of Hebraism 
which I have just quoted. 

"This He Himself acknowledged in calling it 
'the first and greatest commandment,' and in de- 
claring that He came 'not to destroy the Law and the 
prophets, but to fulfil them. His mission was not 
to supplant the old morality by a new one, but 
to fill the old one up to the full. What He accom- 
plished was not the substitution of a new and 
higher code of morals for a lower one.* 

"His task was the far more difficult one of mak- 
ing it possible for the world to live up to these 

* "I am regarding Jesus' mission from a point of view 
which comprehends all that the world had attained to 
previously, and simply comparing His moral teaching 
with the loftiest moral intuitions which were recorded 
before His time. Comparing it with the moral tone, of the 
age in which He lived, He did undoubtedly substitute a 

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RELIGION 

lofty intuitions — to attain to these magnificent pos- 
sibilities to which men's natures testified, but which 
they had sunk so far below, and, when He came, 
seemed (and indeed were) powerless to realize. 

"The recognition of this fact, and the frank ad- 
mission that we find in history before His time the 
record of moral intuitions as lofty as any contained 
in His moral teachings, cuts the ground from un- 
der the feet of those who try to throw discredit on, 
or at least to minimize, the work He accomplished, 
by pointing to these previously recorded moral 
truths and comparing them with those He pro- 
claimed. By thus diligently culling all the best 
moral flowers which bloomed in the ages before 
His coming, it is possible to form a bouquet well 
nigh as fragrant as that which can be gathered from 
the Gospels. But this, far from detracting from, 
adds a hundred-fold to, the glory of His work. 
I am wandering, however, from the line of thought 
I am attempting to follow. 

"I have pointed out that by the aid of the moral 
sense the world very early discovered — in the region 
of truth with which it deals — practically all the 
truth which we at present possess. Even if we 
leave out of sight the moral truths which the He- 
brew writings contain, and confine ourselves to the 
moral maxims which we find elsewhere, we find that 
we can add very little to them. The motives upon 

higher code of morals for a lower one — but only by reaf- 
firming what had been previously affirmed." This note is 
•written on a loose sheet of paper, not attached to the 
page, but I have no doubt that it was intended to be in- 
serted here. 

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RELIGION 

which they lay stress as most worthy of being ac- 
cepted as incentives to action, are identical with 
those which any high-minded moralist will feel 
bound to insist on to-day. Doubtless the amount of 
truth which had been grasped by different nations 
and different individuals has varied considerably; 
and hence have arisen differences in law, customs, 
and manners which often seem difficult to reconcile 
with the hypothesis of a universal intuitive moral 
sense. The hypothesis, however, does not necessi- 
tate the assumption that in every individual the 
moral sense has received the same degree of enlight- 
ment, or is equally sensitive to moral light; indeed, 
it almost necessitates the contrary assumption. 
There is quite as much likelihood that differences of 
endowment and differences of opportunity will be 
found here, as elsewhere in life. 

"The question of the primitive condition of 
mankind is still sub judice. We do not know 
either in what state of enlightenment or ignorance 
the moral sense originally was, or how it came to 
pass that man chose as his guides to action motives 
of inferior nobility to those of which his moral 
intuitions expressed approval. Consequently, we 
do not know whether the moral condition in 
which we find many nations and races at the 
present time, or the condition in which many 
nations and races existed in early ages (a con- 
dition in which even the loftiest moral concep- 
tions fall very far short of the highest to which 
the world has attained) is due to their not having 
yet arrived at a full knowledge of the truth which 
the moral sense is capable of apprehending, or to 

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their having lost a loftier primitive ideal by un- 
faithfulness to the light with which it shone. 

"But be that as it may, it is an undoubted fact 
that multitudes of men are born to-day — and have 
in all ages been born — into a moral environment 
which at its best has not afforded them opportuni- 
ties for gaining knowledge of the highest moral 
truths. Even by the utmost faithfulness to the 
judgments of their moral sense they have only been 
able to attain to partial enlightment. For they have 
never known the loftiest incentives to action. 
These have been beyond the range of their experi- 
ence ; in neither life nor thought have they ever en- 
countered them, and consequently their moral sense 
has never had the opportunity of bearing witness to 
the light, since it has never known anything but 
twilight. 

"It may be contended that the natural springs 
of action in human nature, concerning the quality 
of which the moral sense must be able to affirm as 
soon as they manifest themselves, will enable every 
human being to apprehend moral truth up to the 
limits of the capacity of his nature. 

"But there is good reason for supposing that 
the higher springs of action are not as a rule aroused 
in men until they become acquainted with the mani- 
festations of these in other personalities. There 
are doubtless exceptions to this rule; but even if, 
in a man's earlier years, promptings to nobility of 
action are stirred within him which have never met 
with their counterparts in life or in thought, it is 
undoubtedly true that in the great majority of cases 
they soon perish in the uncongenial atmosphere of 

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RELIGION 

the lower one by which they are surrounded, and 
the man's moral ideal dwindles to that of his time 
and nation. And in the majority of cases it never 
is any higher than this. There have indeed been, 
lin almost every age and nation, exceptional men 
who have attained to a loftier moral ideal than 
that with which their environment has acquainted 
them* — men whose moral intuitions have exceeded 
in nobility anything which we can discover in their 
surroundings. But I think it is not incorrect to 
say that, as a rule, the light with Avhich a man is 
illuminated — his moral ideal — is no greater than the 
light which shines from his environment. The 
moral ideal of the Hottentot is far below that of 
the Englishman : he has no opportunities for appre- 
hending many of those higher moral truths which 
are commonplaces to the latter. 

"I venture this thought in explanation of the 
very considerable differences which we find in the 
moral ideal among various races. I would not, 
however, lay too much stress upon it, since the prob- 
lem is undoubtedly complicated by the fact that, in 
the case of most men, that which is indispensable to 
the discernment of truth in this region — faithfulness 
to the moral intuitions, and the desire to find out 
truth in the moral region — is absent. And un- 

* "By 'environment' here I mean truth concerning right 
and wrong, on which men's consciences could pronounce 
judgment of approval or disapproval, with which they 
have by any possibility had opportunities of becoming ac- 
quainted, either through observation of the conduct of 
others, or through instruction, or through books." — Foot- 
note in MS. 

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RELIGION 

faithfulness produces blindness. If a man persist- 
ently acts from lower motives when he is conscious 
of higher ones, the inevitable result will be that 
the higher ones will cease to appear. So that it is 
impossible to tell to what extent in any individual 
the light within him has become darkness because 
he has refused to recognize it — not because it has 
never shone. 

"Nor is it possible to state to what extent the 
moral ideal of a race or nation may have deterior- 
ated through a long course of unfaithfulness. Cer- 
tainly we have many instances in history of the oc- 
currence of this. In this region of truth, no less than 
in lower regions, it is sternly certain that obedience 
to the laws of the Universe does not always cause 
the reactions which are bound to follow to work 
out their effects on the individual or the generation 
which has sinned. It is the children who frequently 
suffer for the sins of their fathers ; and in no case 
do they suffer more than when their fathers' un- 
faithfulness to the moral ideal which has been given 
to them produces its inevitable result — the lower- 
ing of the ideal of the succeeding generation. Such 
a dimming of the lamp of truth causes no less a 
disaster than a curtailing of the possibilities of life 
for those to whom it is transmitted ( for life's possi- 
bilities are bounded by the moral ideal, and, as I 
have said, it is seldom that a man has more light 
than that which comes to him from his environ- 
ment,) besides bringing upon the heads of those 
who have been born into the waning light the dire 
material consequences which always follow, sooner 
or later, on such departures from truth. 

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RELIGION 

"History presents us with no more striking 
illustration of this fact than that which is furnished 
by the closing scenes of the national history of 
Israel. The light which it had had become dark- 
ness; and how great was the darkness! To what 
extremes of folly they rushed, into what depths of 
resultant woe they were plunged, within a few short 
years of the time when they demonstrated the com- 
pleteness of their blindness by rejecting the Light 
of the World ! 

"It must be honestly confessed that the majority 
of the facts with which history acquaints us weigh 
heavily against any theory which attempts to apply 
the modern doctrine of development in its fulness 
to mankind. When we attempt to apply it to the 
moral sense, it breaks down; or, at any rate, it is 
only rendered valid by supposing the development 
to be on a scale so vast that the period within which 
we are as yet enabled to study its progress with 
accuracy barely enables or permits us to note any 
advance. The lives of nations and their rise and 
fall are no more in relation to its onward sweep 
than the gathering and breaking of a wave on a 
storm-beaten coast is to the slow advance of the 
tide; — it is only by widening our horizon to this 
extent, and, moreover, by encroaching on a region 
which lies beyond the bounds of clear knowledge, 
that any such theory can be held. 

"For it can by no means be confidently asserted 
that the world in Jesus Christ's day was not a 
worse world than it was in the earliest times of 
which history furnishes us with any record. At 
any rate, no such marked improvement in its moral 

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RELIGION 

tone is discernible, as the theory that man in this 
respect too can be included under the law of devel- 
opment seems to demand.* 

"A distinction, however, must be made between 
the development of the ideal of the moral sense and 
the progress made towards its realization. 

"With regard to the former, the facts are so con- 
flicting that we can only suspend our judgment till 
a wider knowledge enables us to reconcile them. 
For, on the one hand, there are evidences of the 
existence of a primitive ideal recognized long before 
the dawn of history, and coming to our knowledge 
only through traditions, and the fossil thoughts 
which modern research has unearthed from lan- 
guage. On the other hand, there is the fact that 
many races exist to-day whose moral conceptions 
are so rudimentary as almost to preclude the notion 
that they have ever possessed such an enlightened 
moral sense as that to which this primitive ideal 
bears witness, and suggests rather that their moral 
instincts are at present only in the initial stages of 
a long and slow development. 

"This question, however, is of small importance 
compared with the other one. It is the question 
concerning the realization of the ideal with which 

* I make no attempt to hide the discrepancy which ex- 
ists between this position and the one taken by my friend 
in the notes I have embodied in Chapter II. (see also 
Chapter V. The above is undoubtedly the expression of his 
maturer thinking, and, as will be seen in the subsequent pages, 
is the result of a fuller examination of the question, and I 
think, of a clearer apprehension of its difficulties. 

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RELIGION 

the moral sense illuminates men which is of the 
greatest moment — in the strictest sense, a vital ques- 
tion. 

"It is the lamentable failure of the world to realize 
the moral ideal, which weighs so heavily against 
the complete acceptance of the development theory 
— at any rate, within the lines at present laid down 
by Science. 

"However diligently we may search for indica- 
tions in the previous history of the race of anything 
like a regular, orderly advance towards such a con- 
summation, it must be confessed that if it is not 
altogether wanting, it at any rate has not occurred 
with anything like the regularity and orderliness 
demanded by any theory of development which 
Science would accept. The waves of progress and 
of retrogression have succeeded one another, and 
have acted and reacted on one another with a wild 
complexity which is reducible to no law; and 
whether the tide is higher now than it appears to 
have been at the dawn of history is a question which 
well admits of doubt. Even the Christian centuries 
are not reducible to order under any law at present 
recognized by Science (though an undoubted prog- 
ress towards the realization of the ideal set before 
the world by Him whose Name they bear is trace- 
able in them) ; and the Christian centuries are 
themselves the product of a phenomenon that has 
been a stumbling-block to all scientific theories of 
development; all attempts to comprehend it within 
the domain of law have been hopelessly unsuc- 
cessful. 

"In considering this question of the realization 

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of the moral ideal, we are brought face to face with 
the greatest problem which has ever presented itself 
to man for solution. 

"The strangest and most startling fact which 
experience forces on our attention — a fact which 
has been the standing riddle of time — is this : that 
the differences between the moral ideals of various 
ages and races have been small and unimportant 
compared with the differences which in every indi- 
vidual have manifested themselves between his 
moral ideal and his conduct. 

"A vast discrepancy has always been noticeable 
all the world over between the motives which men 
have recognized as most worthy, and those upon 
which they have habitually acted. Knowledge 
(however it may have been gained) has always been 
far ahead of life. Men have known what was 
morally good and true, and have not chosen it. 

"I abstain from speculations concerning the 
reason for this; the world has had enough and to 
spare of them in every age. I confine myself to 
the question — a far more important one — of the 
remedy for this world-sickness. How are man's 
actions to be brought up to the level of his moral 
ideal? How is he to be persuaded or induced (for 
compulsion is a method which, owing to his posses- 
sion of free will, we cannot conceive as applicable to 
him) to act on every occasion from that motive 
which — of all those which present themselves to his 
consciousness — is stamped with the approval of his 
moral sense? 

"With this question, moreover, another is inti- 
mately associated. For this discrepanc/ between 

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the motives of which the moral sense approves, and 
those which men have ordinarily chosen as guides 
to action, has produced in them that peculiar feeling 
which is termed the 'sense of sin.' The instinct 
which is the guide to truth in this region — which 
they cannot help acknowledging as the true light 
given them to pilot their wills through the mazy 
labyrinths of action — has not failed to record its 
protests against their departures from the path 
which it points out. 

"It has, moreover, in every age and among all 
the races of mankind, produced the conviction 
(though in different degrees of intensity, and ex- 
pressed in various forms) that the individual is 
responsible for this departure — that he is 'guilty' 
in not following the intimations which his moral 
sense conveys to him, and that he is required to 
make up for this declension in some way or other, 
required to make good the difference between what 
he 'ought' to have done and what he actually has 
done. This undoubted fact of human experience 
must, then, be taken into account in any attempt 
to solve the problem as to how the moral ideal is to 
be realized. Before a man can be induced to under- 
take the task of regulating his volitions by the intui- 
tions of the moral sense, he must be relieved of this 
load of responsibility for past failures in this respect 
which lies upon him. He must be assured that he 
will not be for ever handicapped in the pursuit of 
the ideal by the consequences of this neglect to pur- 
sue it previously He must, moreover (I have 
avoided stating it thus hitherto, in order, if possible, 
to maintain the point of view from which I have 

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RELIGION 

been considering this question, but the full truth 
cannot be expressed in any other way) , be convinced 
that the Author of the authoritative commands with 
which the moral sense acquaints him — the Being of 
whom it makes him directly conscious — forgives 
the past, and does not demand from him satisfac- 
tion for his previous disregard of His voice. 

"I do not want now to enter into the question 
of atonement for sin. It is one of extreme interest 
and extreme difficulty. I may say, however, that I 
cannot help thinking that hitherto far too much 
attention has been paid to men's subjective impres- 
sions concerning their guilt, and far too little to the 
objective truth concerning the character of the 
Eternal, with which in its fulness many ideas be- 
gotten of ignorance and fear cannot be harmonized. 
Nor can I help thinking that this question of mere 
reconciliation has had an importance attached to it, 
if not out of proportion to men's immediate needs, 
yet, at any rate, out of proportion to their ultimately 
most essential ones. 

"Reconciliation with the Eternal as the first 
step towards the realization of the moral ideal, is 
indispensable; but life only begins when this 
is accomplished. It is not the motive which will 
induce a man to begin the attempt, which is of 
greatest moment, but the motive which will enable 
him to keep his will firm to the course of conduct 
of which his moral sense approves amid all the 
allurements and temptations which beset him in his 
walk through life. Unless he comes under the sway 
of a motive which will enable him to do this, he can 

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only stand on the threshold of life; what life in its 
fulness is, he cannot know. 

"Without, then, entering further at present into 
the question of how men are to be relieved of that 
sense of guilt which their choice of motives other 
than those of which the moral sense approves has 
produced, I will consider the undoubtedly far more 
important one — How is the moral ideal to be real- 
ized? 

"Although I have previously acknowledged the 
existence, and hinted at the character, of that region 
of Truth which the moral sense apprehends, I have 
hitherto disregarded its bearings on the problem. 
I have considered the moral sense simply as the 
faculty which approves or disapproves of the 
motives which arise in consciousness, without con- 
sidering its relations to the Eternal Consciousness, 
or rather the relations of the Eternal Consciousness 
to it. 

"But thus to contemplate the intuitions of the 
moral sense without contemplating their Source — 
to regard the instinct which speaks directly to our 
wills, and testifies to the existence of a Will outside 
of us, without taking that Will into account — is to 
leave out the most important factor of the problem, 
and to deprive ourselves of all right to expect that 
we can arrive at satisfying truth. 

"Morality and religion cannot be divorced. In 
an Eternal Will, with whose preferences the moral 
sense acquaints us, can we alone discover an ade- 
quate ground for, and justification of, the judgments 
which it pronounces. In satisfying relations be- 
tween ourselves as the possessors of will-power, and 

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RELIGION 

the Great Personality whose will we know through 
conscience, can we alone hope to find the solution 
of the problem as to how we are to attain to the 
realization of the ideal which the moral sense sets 
before us — to the life which it summons us to live. 

"My justification for not having hitherto re- 
garded the question in this fuller light is the fact 
that it is just this most important factor which the 
majority of men ignore — it is just this essential 
relationship between themselves and the Great 
Personality which they fail to establish. Often, 
indeed, they fail even to realize that it is possible 
to establish it. 

"Philosophically, there is no reason, so far as I 
can see, why men should not be able, by faithful- 
ness to the intuitions of the moral sense, to bring 
themselves into perfect harmony with the Eternal 
Will, — no reason why they should not be able to 
attain to complete obedience to that Will through a 
frank recognition of the infinite worth and beauty 
of the life of relations with it, coupled with strenu- 
ous endeavours to cultivate that life. 

"And in point of fact, some men have gone a 
considerable way in this direction. If they have 
not achieved all that we can deem it possible for 
human nature to achieve, they have at least 
advanced so far beyond the majority that the 
world recognizes their achievements by ranking 
them as her noblest sons. Their conceptions of the 
moral ideal have been accepted as the loftiest which 
have ever been known; their attitude towards the 
Eternal has been recognized as the most fitting 
which men can assume; and the life to which they 

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have attained has been deemed the noblest and 
most satisfying which men can live. 

"I have more particularly in my mind the 
prophets and psalmists of the Hebrew nation. 
The world still finds inspiration in the moral ideal 
which was the goal of their aspirations; still 
derives help from the utterances which their 
passionate desire to realize it forced from their 
lips; still sees, in their conceptions of the Eternal, 
and in the attitude which they assumed towards 
Him, food for reverent contemplation, and example 
for zealous imitation. 

"Nevertheless, it can, I think, hardly fail to be 
admitted that in this last respect (i. e. the attaining 
to complete and joyful obedience to the Will which 
the moral sense makes us conscious of) the record 
contained in the Old Testament writings leaves 
much to be desired. And at this point of my 
inquiry at which I have arrived, it is the most im- 
portant that a thoroughly satisfactory answer should 
be found to the question as to whether such an 
attainment is possible for man. 

"It is true that these men could sing, 'The Lord 
is my Shepherd, I shall not want ;' and, T love Thee, 
O Lord, my Strength. The Lord is my Rock and 
my Fortress and my high Deliverer; my God, my 
strong Tower, in Him will I trust; my Shield, and 
the Horn of my salvation; my high Tower;' and, 
'Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is 
the man that trusteth in Him ;' and, T delight to do 
Thy will, O my God, yea, Thy Law is within my 
heart;' and, T have no good beyond Thee. Thou 
wilt show me the path of life: in Thy presence is 

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RELIGION 

fulness of joy, in Thy right hand there are pleasures 
for evermore.' 

"Thus — and in many other utterances too 
numerous to quote, plentifuly interspersed through 
the Psalms and the prophetical books — did these 
men give expression to their trust and confidence 
and delight in the Eternal. But still we do not find 
that continuously joyful confidence, that perfectly 
reposeful trust, that fulness of conviction, not only 
that obedience to the Eternal Will would lead to 
life, but that it was life, which we can alone deem 
perfectly satisfactory. Nor do we find that bright, 
glad, intelligent service rendered which should, nay, 
must be rendered to a perfect Being perfectly known 
and loved. 

"Such a trust, such a knowledge, such an 
obedience as this will, I take it, alone completely 
satisfy human needs, human desires, human capa- 
bilities ; and to this the Hebrew prophets and seers, 
grand and noble as they undoubtedly were, did not 
attain. 

"There is in their writings a note of doubt, to 
match nearly every note of trust ; a cry for light, to 
match nearly every declaration of confident assur- 
ance; a confession of ignorance, to match nearly 
every avowal of knowledge; an acknowledgement 
of blind adhesion to a rule of right not yet perfectly 
understood, to match nearly every outburst of intel- 
ligent enthusiasm for the Divine commandments. 
Their service was not perfect freedom, not the will- 
ing obedience of sons : to a completely satisfying 
relationship with the Eternal they did not attain. 

"And indeed, a difficulty in the way of arriving 

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RELIGION 

at satisfying truth by the only path which was open 
to them, becomes evident here — a difficulty which 
we must not overlook. 

"Human nature is the only field which presents 
itself to our view wherein appear those motives 
which are the objects of the judgments of the moral 
sense. Man is the only measure of the Eternal. 
Nowhere else but to manhood can we look with any 
hope of discovering that upon which the moral intui- 
tion exercises its powers. Is, then, the Eternal only 
to be discovered by our discovering ourselves? Is 
the moral quality of the Eternal Will to be gauged 
only by the quality of the motives which present 
themselves to our consciousness? Is the Eternal 
Righteousness to be apprehended only to the extent 
to which human nature embodies it ? Is the fulness 
of the Eternal Love to be indicated only by that 
poverty of love which human hearts display? 

"The admission that through the moral sense 
we come into direct touch with the Not-Ourselves — 
the recognition of the fact that we are immediately 
conscious of the Eternal Will — would at first sight 
seem to enable us to escape this difficulty. If on 
this side of man's nature there is a door opening 
directly on the Infinite, is there any reason why the 
infinite fulness should not flow into him and saturate 
him with its perfect essence? is there any reason 
why he should not apprehend the quality of the 
Eternal Will to the extremest limits of truth? 

"To which I have already replied, 'Philosophi- 
cally, no reason.' 

"If it is possible directly to commune with the 
Eternal, we cannot assign any limits to the fulness 

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RELIGION 

of that communion; its possibilities are as exhaust- 
less as His own infinitude; and if this communion 
had received no check — if this door to the infinite 
had not been shut — the difficulty I have suggested 
would never have presented itself. 

"But for some reason, which, as I have before 
remarked, has baffled the wisdom of the most 
thoughtful men in all ages, and still remains the 
standing riddle of time — this communion has been 
checked, this door has been shut — or at any rate 
half closed; so that even in those cases in which 
communion with the Eternal has been most deep, 
a feeling has remained that a satisying fulness has 
not been reached — a feeling that the quality of the 
Eternal Will could not be adequately gauged by the 
quality of even the noblest motives which arose in 
consciousness ; that some clearer vision of truth was 
needed in order that the hunger of the moral sense 
might be appeased, and man's aspirations be satis- 
fied. 

"It is assuredly a most striking and significant 
fact that the very nation which attained to the 
loftiest moral ideal the world has known, and to 
the fullest sense of communion with the Eternal, 
was the one which possessed the strongest desire for 
a fuller revelation of His nature and character, and 
the most confident hope that this desire would be 
realized. 

"In other nations also we find the desire and the 
hope appearing that some type of the Eternal would 
come amongst them to whom they could look as the 
Embodiment of a perfect ideal — as the Satisfier of 
all human aspirations and needs; but in no nation 

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RELIGION 

have they ever been so intense and so clear as they 
were in the Hebrew nation. 

"We find the hope appearing in the very dawn 
of their history that One would appear who would 
fulfil all righteousness, and establish a kingdom as 
wide as the world. We find that expectation and 
hope growing continually clearer and more confi- 
dent during the thousand years of the nation's rise, 
decline, and fall. We find it surviving the destruc- 
tion of all their earthly hopes, and strongest and 
clearest at the very time when — within a very few 
years of the total extinction of their national life — 
He appeared whom all the centuries since have ac- 
knowledged to be the crown and flower of our race 
— the ideal Man, the perfect type and pattern of the 
Eternal. 

"I have deemed it necessary to enter into this 
digression in order to make it clear to what extent 
a steady pursuit of the moral ideal can enable men 
to win satisfying truth in that region with which 
the moral sense brings them into touch, and to 
what extent it can enable them to establish satis- 
factory and satisfying relations between themselves 
and the Great Personality. 

"We see that it leaves much to be desired, both 
with regard to the perfection of the moral ideal 
itself, and also with regard to the fulness and com- 
plete satisfyingness of the relations which it enables 
men to establish with the Eternal. We find that 
the amount of knowledge and of communion to 
which men have attained has, even in the best in- 
stances, fallen far short of that for which they have 
hoped and longed. And it must be noted that that 

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mysterious deflection of the will from the steady 
pursuit of the moral ideal to which I have previ- 
ously referred manifested itself even in the case of 
those who pursued moral good most eagerly, and 
fatally hindered them in their endeavours to attain 
to perfection. 

"And if this was the case with those for whom 
the door into the infinite stood widest open, and 
who displayed the strongest desire to conform to 
the moral ideal, how much more was it the case with 
the majority of our race? For, as I have said, in 
the case of the majority that door is shut. The 
majority of men have never understood the relation 
which exists between the voice of conscience within 
them and the Living Fact without them. They have 
never established a correspondence between their 
moral sense and its proper environment. They 
have had no desire to correspond. Their choice of 
motives has been persistently contrary to their 
moral intuitions. They have strayed far away from 
the path in which conscience seeks to lead them, 
and have chosen to follow other guides than the 
one appointed by Heaven. The inevitable result 
of this course of action has been that the intuitions 
of the moral sense have been thrown into opposi- 
tion. Conscience has been deprived of her rightful 
position of ruler, and has been constrained to limit 
herself to protestations. She cannot help bearing 
witness to the light, but her witness, to those who 
have turned away from the light, has been com- 
pelled to take the form of warning, reproof, and 
stern condemnation, — of imperative commands to 
do or to abstain from doing this or that. Of these 

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RELIGION 

commands the latter kind, of necessity, predomi- 
nate, for the 'thou shalt riots' must inevitably speak 
louder than the 'thou shalts' to the man who has re- 
volted from the authority of Conscience. 

"This attitude of stern, unreasoning command 
which, in the majority of men, Conscience has been 
compelled to adopt, both tends to produce, and is 
the result of (it is really impossible to say now 
whether it should be accounted a cause or an 
effect) their ignorance of the environment of which 
it speaks. 

"The intuitions of the moral sense have ceased 
to appear reasonable, because most men have ceased 
to be in vital touch with the environment of which 
it makes them conscious, and do not correspond 
with it. Consequently, these intuitions no longer 
present themselves to men as indications of vast 
and wonderful possibilities of life, but only as un- 
reasonable intimations that such and such a course 
of conduct 'ought' to be followed or shunned. And 
the environment to which they testify ceases to 
present itself to them as good — as being on its own 
account infinitely worthy of being sought for, de- 
lighted in, and loved; it only appears to them as 
that which 'must' be paid attention to (to some ex- 
tent), owing to its ceaseless importunity of authori- 
tative command. 

"In other words (for it is impossible by the use 
of the scientific term 'environment,' to state the 
truth fully), man has ceased to regard the intuitions 
of the moral sense as intimations of the truth re- 
specting the will of the Eternal, which it is his glo- 
rious privilege to know and to do. He has ceased 

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RELIGION 

(or failed) to realize that to do that will is neces- 
sary to the perfection of his being. And that essen- 
tial conviction being lost (or never gained; the cor- 
porate character of the race impresses itself upon 
one so strongly in the consideration of this question, 
that he is rather apt to speak as if he were attribut- 
ing responsibility where he is only describing 
effects), all sorts of doubts concerning the goodness 
of that will (which would never have appeared had 
not man shut the door between himself and it) have 
filled his soul. Communion with the Eternal being 
stopped, knowledge about Him was all that remained 
possible — knowledge at all removes from Truth. 

"Hence men have regarded the Eternal as the 
Avenger, the stern Law-giver, the strict Judge, be- 
cause these conceptions alone have harmonized with 
the forms which the intuitions of the moral sense 
have assumed. They are distortions of the truth — 
the spawn of ignorance and fear. They are possible 
only when men have no vital relations with Truth, 
when the door between them and the Eternal is 
shut, when the desire to follow the intuitions of the 
moral sense is absent (or, at any rate, when there 
is no realization of the relation in which these intui- 
tions stand to Life). In this condition, men hear 
in conscience only the voice of warning and reproof, 
and the imperative call to obedience; they do not 
recognize it as the call to fellowship with the 
Eternal, and to a free and intelligent service in the 
bonds of mutual affection. 

"This, then, is the condition in which the majority 
of men actually are. They have no correspondence 

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RELIGION 

with the environment with which their moral sense 
acquaints them; they have no true knowledge of 
the fact which it, and it alone, is capable of appre- 
hending. As far as this part of their nature is con- 
cerned, they are dead — the voice of Conscience in 
them being no more than the stifled cry of a crushed 
and outraged instinct ever craving for the satisfac- 
tion which is denied it. We are well enough ac- 
quainted with the extremes of hunger to which this 
instinct is sometimes reduced. We know that in 
some cases it has been so crushed that it has well- 
nigh ceased to feel the pangs of hunger at all, and 
has been as nearly extinguished as any original in- 
stinct in our nature can be. We know, too, what 
crude, and distorted, and erroneous conceptions of 
the Eternal men have had, and, indeed, still have — 
conceptions which invariably coexist with a low 
state of moral development ;* conceptions which are 
utterly unworthy of the Creator of the universe, 
and altogether out of harmony with the instincts, 
and irreconcilable with the requirements, of an 
enlightened nature. 

"These are facts. This is the sober truth con- 
cerning man — as we ordinarily find him — compared, 
or rather contrasted, with what a careful examina- 
tion of his nature, in the light of other facts with 
which history supplies us, compel us to conclude that 
he may become. They are facts which must be 
taken into account and allowed their due weight by 
all who seriously study human nature. Not one of 

* "Invariably, I believe, in men's inmost minds, though 
not always acknowledged in their professions of belief." — 
Footnote in MS. 

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RELIGION 

them can be overlooked : no solution of this problem 
which they present (the necessity of making a clear 
statement of this problem before attempting a solu- 
tion has compelled me to examine them in detail) 
can be deemed worthy of notice which does not do 
justice to all of them, and suggest an adequate 
remedy. 

"This problem, as I have before stated it, is — 
How is the moral ideal to be realized? But 
inasmuch as our examination has forced us to the 
conclusion that, in order fully to satisfy man's capa- 
bilities, and to fulfil his aspirations and longings, 
this ideal itself, even in the loftiest form in which 
men have known it, needs expansion (and can we 
assign any limits to that expansion short of in- 
finity?), this also must be taken into account in 
offering our solution. 

"Let us briefly review the factors of the problem. 

"We require ( I ) the moral idea to be expanded 
till it affords adequate satisfaction to the limitless 
ambition of man (2) A sufficient remedy for the 
sense of guilt. (3) The re-establishment of corre- 
spondence between man's moral sense and its proper 
environment. 

"This last involves, and may be subdivided into, 
(a) the bringing of man to the recognition of the 
fact that the intimations concerning conduct which 
Conscience conveys to him are for his good — that 
the moral instincts point the way to the best, the 
highest, and the fullest life ; or, to state it in another 
way, that it is altogether good and delightful to do 
the will of the Eternal ; and (&) the placing at man's 
disposal (or perhaps it will be more correct to say, 

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RELIGION 

the bringing of him under the attractive influence) 
of a power strong enough to draw his will away 
from the sway of motives of which the moral sense 
disapproves — i. e. to back up the intuitions of the 
moral sense by a motive-power under the influence 
of which man shall be led to pursue virtue with 
a passionate and absorbing delight, even as he now 
pursues lower ends, such as wealth or fame. 

"This last factor of the problem, indeed, well 
deserves more attention than I have hitherto be- 
stowed upon it. It was the factor which baffled 
the wisdom of the greatest philosophers of the an- 
cient world How to create the desire for virtue; 
how to right the bias of the will, and enable men to 
follow after and delight in 'the good,' as the moral 
sense revealed it to them; — that was a problem 
which they had to confess to be insoluble. What 
'the good' was, they saw by no means indistinctly; 
but how to induce the great mass of men who were 
pursuing far other ends to make it the goal of their 
endeavours, they could not discover. 

"Most pathetic is Aristotle's admission con- 
cerning the probable effect of his teachings on the 
world. 'Some few,' he says, 'who are disposed to 
virtue may profit somewhat by these discourses of 
mine, but on the majority, who are wholly given up 
to the pursuit of pleasure, they can exert no influ- 
ence whatever.'* 

"This confession, by the wisest of the ancients, 
of inability, by any inculcation of virtue, to win 
over the mass of men to what was good, is striking 

* My friend is evidently quoting from memory. The 
passage he refers to is in the "Ethics" (chap. x. sec. 10). 

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RELIGION 

in many ways. It shows how early Philosophy 
discovered her inability to accomplish that moral 
reformation, the need for which she so clearly saw. 
It is a confession of the greatness of man's need, 
and of her powerlessness to meet it; and, admitting 
this, it almost compels the question — Is there no 
outside help to be looked for? What is the truth 
concerning the 'Not-Ourselves' of which the moral 
sense speaks, and is it not possible to find there a 
motive-power strong enough to turn the will to 
virtue, and to enable man to accomplish the realiza- 
tion of the moral ideal? 

"I have already pointed out how entirely the 
majority of men fail to take into account — or, at any 
rate, rightly and adequately to estimate the impor- 
tance of — this Fact outside themselves to which the 
moral sense bears witness ; and I have endeavoured 
to state the utmost truth concerning it at which it is 
possible to arrive by an examination of the facts 
which pre-Christian history records. 

"We cannot, indeed, wonder that ancient Philos- 
ophy ignored this side of the truth; for Philosophy 
simply endeavours, by a study of the facts of con- 
sciousness, to ascertain what the truth about human 
nature is, and the facts known to the ancient philos- 
ophers presented nothing which could enable them 
to arrive at satisfying conclusions. For, as I have 
said, the door between the moral intuitions and the 
truth was shut. There was no correspondence be- 
tween these and their proper environment in the 
consciousness of those from whom the ancient phil- 
osophers deduced their conclusions, and conse- 
quently the only estimate they could arrive at con- 

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RELIGION 

cerning that environment was an imperfect and in- 
adequate one. 

"And it is unfortunately true that modern Philos- 
ophy has almost exclusively adopted the same stand- 
point, and only argued from the same facts as those 
which were at the service of her elder sister. 

"A philosophy deducted from a Christian con- 
sciousness has not yet been constructed. Whether 
it is the fault of Philosophy or Religion, need not 
now be considered, but undoubtedly Philosophy 
hitherto has not given due attention to, nor ade- 
quately estimated the importance of, the phenomena 
of the Christian consciousness ; nor have those who 
have devoted themselves to the study of this con- 
sciousness accomplished the task of reconciling their 
conclusions with those at which their co-explorers 
in the broad fields of human nature have arrived. 

"The materials are there; but they have been 
used to erect two separate edifices : the construction 
with them of a spacious temple in which the most 
enlightened mind and consciousness can dwell has 
yet to be accomplished. 

"This, however, is a digression. 

"I return to my inquiry — Can we find in the en- 
vironment with which (as apprehended by the con- 
sciousness of the noblest souls of the Hebrew race) 
the moral sense has enabled the world to become ac- 
quainted, any ground for hope that it will supply 
motive-power which will enable (or persuade) man 
to pursue virtue as the chief end of life ? 

"To this question, having regard solely to the 
facts we have already examined, I do not think we 
can give an altogether satisfactory answer. The 

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RELIGION 

motive-power which impelled the prophets and 
saints of the Hebrew nation to pursue the moral 
ideal — the impulse which led them to desire right- 
eousness so earnestly, and to 'thirst for the living 
God' so passionately — is a power whose whence and 
whither we know not. Only a select few of that 
select nation felt its influence. They did not them- 
selves understand it. It came upon them from be- 
yond their wills, and sometimes (as in the case of 
Jonah) compelled them against their wills; and they 
called it 'the Spirit of the Lord.' 

"The wisdom of two thousand years has been 
able to understand it no better, nor to call it by any 
better name. 'Inspiration' men have named it — 
the breaking in upon them from the beyond of a 
Spirit which took supreme possession of their wills, 
and made them the vehicles of Its influence, the 
channels for Its purposes. 

"Clearly, however, such a mysterious and un- 
certain agency as that cannot be relied upon for the 
regeneration of the world. A power which comes 
to some men only, cannot, with any confidence, be 
trusted as the influence which shall enable men to 
realize the moral ideal which Conscience sets before 
them. Nor can we rely on its transmitted influence. 
Its presence in many souls of the Hebrew race did 
not prevent that race from suffering moral decay, 
did not avert national ruin ; and we are not war- 
ranted in supposing that elsewhere its indirect in- 
fluence will be more efficacious. 

"Moreover, let those who will deprecate such sug- 
gestions and urge the inscrutability of the 'Divine 
decrees,' we cannot (unless we regard it as simply a 

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RELIGION 

preparation for something more satisfactory which 
is to follow) avoid grave doubts as to the justice 
of such an arbitrary bestowal or withholding of this 
much-to-be-desired power. Nor can we (unless our 
supposition is correct, that it is only a forecast and 
foretaste of a fuller revelation of a power to be 
placed some day within the reach of all) reconcile 
it with the truth concerning the Eternal in the pos- 
session of which the world has been placed by those 
who by this mysterious Influence have been led to 
know Him. 

"For these reasons, therefore, the question — 
What hope is there that the 'Not-Ourselves' with 
which man comes in contact in Conscience will sup- 
ply the motive-power which he needs before he can 
conform his will to these intuitions? can receive, in 
the light of the facts which the history of the 
Hebrew nation supplies, only a tentative answer. 
There is hope, but not full assurance of hope; or. 
rather, it is only hope ; we must search elsewhere to 
discover whether it has been realized or not. The 
power which was given to these men was not such 
as the whole world can lay hold of ; but perchance it 
was the forerunner of some power accessible to all. 
The knowledge which it enabled these men to gain 
strengthens this surmise, nay, demands its realiza- 
:ion, but does not actually disclose the source from 
r hence it is to spring: it only anticipates it with 
earnest longing. 

'The Eternal is gracious and full of compas- 
sion, slow to anger, and of great mercy ;' 'Like as a 
father pitieth his children, so the Eternal pitieth 
them that fear Him;' 'Let the wicked forsake his 

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RELIGION 

way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let 
him return unto the Eternal, and He will have 
mercy upon him, even to our God, for He will 
abundantly pardon.' How can such a revelation of 
the character of the Will that speaks in conscience 
stop short of the unfolding of a means by which not 
only the chosen men of a chosen nation, but every 
being in whom the voice of Conscience — however 
feebly — speaks, shall be put in the possession of 
power which shall enable him to conform to the 
voice within — enable him to attain to that life of 
conscious oneness with the Eternal of which it is 
the promise, and to which its sternest command is 
the most passionate call ? 

"But what kind of power is conceivable which can 
thus act on the will ? and of what kind must we con- 
ceive in order that our conception shall harmonize 
with the knowledge of the Eternal which we 
already have ? 

"Evidently (to take these questions in the order 
in which I have stated them) it must be a motive of 
some kind; for compulsion is out of the question 
where free will is concerned. It must be an impulse 
to action aroused by some want (perhaps it is more 
correct to say, springing from some original capa- 
bility) of the nature — not necessarily what we have 
been capable of, but what we can be capable of, if a 
sufficient inducement presents itself, if a suitable 
object of desire appears. 

"Moreover, it must be a motive stronger than 
any of those which at present sway the will ; other- 
wise we cannot conceive of the will being drawn 
away from these. It must be a deeper desire, an 

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RELIGION 

intenser hunger, a more absorbing passion, than any 
other which arises in consciousness; attracting the 
will to follow after that which will best relieve and 
satisfy it with an attractive power capable of over- 
coming all resisting influences. 

"It is evident, from a glance at humanity as we 
ordinarily find it, that no such supreme motive has 
ever arisen in the consciousness of the majority of 
men in association with the intuitions of the moral 
sense. Nay, we can say of many men that no 
motive to which we can attribute sufficient power 
to accomplish this task, if associated with the 
dictates of conscience, has ever been stirred within 
them all. 

"From deeper depths of consciousness than have 
ever yet been stirred, by vaster and more funda- 
mental needs than any they have yet experienced, 
must these motives come, this impulse be imparted, 
which shall have power to turn the will from the 
pursuit of lower ends to the pursuit of the good 
which the intuitions of the moral sense apprehend. 

"But has no motive ever been stirred in any con- 
sciousness to which we can attribute sufficient power 
to draw the will, with a supreme attraction, aw?"** 
from all other pursuits to those which will most 
completely satisfy the want from which it has 
sprung? Is there no primary need of our nature 
which, once felt, sways the will with complete con- 
trol, and impels it to seek to satisfy it even at the 
expense of all other desires ? 

"Yes, there is one such motive — a motive which 
in every age has been strong enough to sway the 
will with supreme power. It is a motive arising 

[2771 



RELIGION 

from a craving of our nature which, though debased 
and degraded by the abuse of its holiest sacrament, 
has yet continued capable of producing the intensest 
longing and agony when unsatisfied, and the keen- 
est joy and delight when meeting with adequate 
response, of any of which the possibilities of our 
being permit. It is a motive which has continually 
shown itself supreme in its influence over life, and 
in its power to mould character, lifting men into the 
loftiest heights of nobility and blessedness, or plung- 
ing them into the lowest depths of sin and woe, by 
the might of its own matchless strength. 

"I refer to the passion of love — that unique 
reciprocal influence and correspondence which it is 
possible to establish between ourselves and another 
self; that deep-seated desire and craving which has, 
especially in the form in which it is usually met 
with — the love between man and woman — shown 
itself in every age the most potent of all the forces 
which stir our nature. 

"The analyst of the springs of action which arise 
in consciousness may object to classify it as a sim- 
ple motive, or to refer it to any primary want of 
our being, on account of the great variety and com- 
plexity of those feelings and desires with which 
it is associated. And certainly an emotion which 
spreads itself over the whole field of possible 
achievement which human nature can exercise itself 
in — a motive which can attach itself to any or all of 
the other motives which arise in consciousness, and 
make them feel its kindling touch,cannot be consid- 
ered of the same order as these. But to me this 
seems to be rather a proof of its central and primary 

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RELIGION 

character than the reverse — a proof that it is fund- 
amental and unique ; an original affection of our per- 
sonality : a deep-seated need in which all other needs 
are swallowed up and lost : a craving which can only 
be satisfied by the combined ministry of all our fac- 
ilities and powers. It seems to arise in deeper re- 
gions of consciousness than are stirred within us 
by any other object of desire which the Universe 
offers; it seems to come upon all the other motives 
from behind, and to intensify each or all of them 
by a unique and peculiar power of its own. It 
seems to be central and essential to the soul of man. 

"If I am correct in assigning this central and 
fundamental position to the passion of love — if it 
is a spiritual affection, twin-sister to faith, pertain- 
ing to the ego, and not otherwise definable than as 
an original capability thereof — we can understand 
this unique influence which it exerts over all other 
parts of man's nature, and over life. 

"Pertaining to what man is, not to what he has, 
its importance is proportionate to the relative worth 
of these two. And since the whole of the latter 
is subservient to the former, it cannot but hold itself 
in readiness, in each and all its parts, to minister 
to this supreme need. 

"But this aspect of the question is too far re- 
moved from my present subject to permit me to 
follow its intricacies. This is the selfward aspect, 
in which direction indeed the majority of men look, 
trying to find in themselves satisfaction for this 
craving of their spirits; but none the less it is a 
fatally wrong direction in which to look, as suicidal, 

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RELIGION 

indeed, as the fabled attempt of the eagle to feed on 
its own vitals. 

"For we are not gods, capable of sustaining and 
satisfying ourselves from ourselves, but must con- 
tinually look without — to the non-ego — in order to 
find satisfaction for the cravings of our natures. 

"But like alone can satisfy like; the environment 
must be of equal rank with the faculty in order to 
be able to meet and supply its cravings. There- 
fore it is not in things, but in persons — in beings 
similarly constituted to ourselves — that we can 
alone discover an environment capable of satisfying 
this fundamental craving which belongs to our 
personality — that we can alone find corresponding 
depths to answer to the echoing deeps of our own 
being. And this enables us to understand why 
the quality of love varies so greatly — even of that 
love which looks away from self and centres itself 
in another. (Much that passes by that name even 
in the relations between persons, is only a self- 
love.) Its quality depends upon what each finds 
in the other to support love's cravings, to satisfy 
love's need, and ultimately, and before long too, 
it adjusts itself to this — the amount of that in the 
beloved which it can discover worthy of reverence 
and esteem ; in other words, to the amount, real or 
imagined (one is obliged to put in that clause to 
cover those cases in which true love lavishes itself 
on unworthy objects; they are not unworthy in 
love's eyes), of moral worth which the personality 
possesses. 

"It is this which gives love such power to elevate 
or debase the possessor; to strengthen, purify, and 

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RELIGION 

ennoble, or to weaken and corrupt. The passion of 
love draws mutually affected souls to a level with an 
attractive power of resistless strength. Those under 
its influence ever tend to become like the object on 
which their passion is centred. 

" 'Thou art mated to a clown, 
And the grossness of his nature will have weight to drag 
thee down.' 

"With which compare, in the same poem — 

" 'Love took up the harp of life, and smote on all the 
chords with might; 
Smote the chord of self that, trembling, pass'd in music 
out of sight.' 

"We arrive, then, at this conclusion in answer to 
the question — What conceivable kind of power is 
there which is capable of acting supremely on the 
will?— 

"We find that it must be a motive arising from 
some original and fundamental craving of the 
nature, which impels the will with supreme power 
to act in such ways as shall best bring it satisfaction, 
because it is felt to be a supreme need. And we 
find that one such motive, arising from one such 
felt need, is present in human nature — the desire 
and craving to love and to be loved — which, more- 
over (an important fact to be kept in view in rela- 
tion to our main inquiry), has always exerted an 
ennobling influence on the life in proportion as the 

I beloved one has been good. 
"Therefore (let us draw this necessary conclu- 
sion at once) a supreme love, manifested in con- 



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RELIGION 

junction with a supreme goodness, will be able to 
accomplish the task of righting the bias of the will 
and inducing it to undertake the realization of the 
moral ideal. 

"And having got thus far, I need only say a very 
few words in answer to the question — What kind of 
power must we conceive of in order that our con- 
ceptions may be in harmony with the conclusions 
which we have already arrived at concerning the 
Living Will with which we are acquainted through 
the intuitions of the moral sense ? — 

"There is one power, and one only, worthy of 
emanating from that Eternal Spirit whose will the 
Hebrew seers so clearly apprehended ; there is one 
revelation, and one only, which will crown and 
complete their conceptions of Him, and fulfil the 
hopes and longings which possessed their souls. If 
the depths of the Eternal Personality are filled with 
infinite love — if anywhere we can find proof, by 
being able to point anywhere in humanity to the 
spectacle of measureless love in conjunction with 
spotless purity, that God indeed is Love — then, and 
only then, are all human needs met, all conceptions 
crowned, all hopes, longings, and aspirations real- 
ized. 

"To sum up once more before I draw the evident 
and long-foreseen conclusion to which this train of 
thought has been leading me, we want — 

"(i) For the completion of the moral ideal — a 
perfect character. 

"(2) For the removal of the sense of guilt — a 
ground for the expectation of forgiveness. 

"(3) For the will — a supreme motive. 

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RELIGION 

"(4) for the heart — boundless love. 

"And without hesitation I say, they are all to be 
found in the Man Christ Jesus ; more especially in 
that amazing deed wherewith He crowned and 
consummated His life and His life-work — His death 
on the cross. 

"I find myself altogether unable to exhaust the 
perfections of that perfect Man. I can assign no 
limits to the forgiving mercy of the loving Father 
whom He revealed. I cannot fathom the depths 
of that self-renouncing love which led Him to the 
cross. I yield to its constraining power. It impels 
me, with a force my will cannot resist, to strive to 
do those things which will please Him best, and 
thus transforms me into the image of His matchless 
perfection, and lifts me into the fulness of His life. 
The more I ponder His life and His death, the more 
am I constrained to say, 'Verily in Him dwelt all 
the fulness of the Godhead bodily.' I can conceive 
of, can imagine, can crave for, no truth which I do 
not find in Him. My whole being — heart, and 
mind, and soul — prostrates itself in utter reverence- 
— in an ecstasy of awful joy — before that manifes- 
tation of the Real, the Eternal Fact, God. 

"Art Thou even thus, O infinite Spirit! Is this 
Thy Life! Is it Thou who hast made me and the 
universe — Thou, in whose embrace I lie : in the 
hollow of whose hand creation rests ? 

"Oh, wonderful beyond all power of conception! 
Oh, beautiful beyond all power of imagining! Oh,. 

k blissful beyond all capacity of feeling ! O Life, how 
good Thou art! My God, My Father!" 






[283] 



CHAPTER VIII 

LOVE 

I have now reached the last stage of the task to 
which I committed myself when I undertook the 
duty of editing my friend's MSS. 

I have endeavoured, in the previous chapters, to 
give the reader such selections from my friend's 
writings as would enable him to trace the develop- 
ment of his thinking. I have at the same time 
striven to keep in view the purpose which these 
fragmentary writings were originally intended to 
serve. I have confined my attention to this two- 
fold aim, and in doing so have been compelled to 
put aside much interesting matter which I have 
found among the MSS., because it did not seem to 
me to come within the scope of this aim. 

The attempt I have made is necessarily a very 
imperfect one, but I am not without hope that it has 
not been wholly unsuccessful. 

The reader will, I trust, have gathered from the 
previous pages that my friend had a strong leaning 
towards the scientific — i.e. the inductive — method 
of inquiry. This led him at first to favour those 
views of life which are so frequently found associ- 
ated with scientific pursuits. But he could not rest 
at the point at which most scientific men stop in 
their inductions. He could not accept as satis- 

[284] 



LOVE 

factory those conclusions which have been so largely 
accepted by modern Science and modern Philosophy 
as ultimate ones. He could not believe that the 
Power which Science finds behind phenomena is 
unknowable. He was led, alike by the cravings of 
his natrue and by his reverence for facts — many of 
which, especially in the region of morals and re- 
ligion, seemed to him to demand more satisfactory 
explanations than Science and Philosophy offered — 
to seek for fuller and deeper knowledge. Still fol- 
lowing the inductive method, he proceeded to ex- 
amine those deeper regions of his nature, of which 
his consciousness gave evidence; and the facts 
which he there discovered he brought face to face 
with corresponding facts in the field of human life. 
The reader has already had opportunities of see- 
ing where his investigations ultimately led him. He 
will have seen from the last note of the previous 
chapter that they brought him to Jesus Christ as the 
perfect Revealer of the character of God, and to 
His cross as the pledge and gauge of the love of the 
Eternal. The measure of the fulness of life which 
is possible to man he found to be "the measure of 
the stature of the fulness of Christ." The power 
which is alone capable of enabling man to attain to 
it, he found to be "the love of God which is in Christ 
Jesus our Lord." He beheld all the lines of truth 
converge in Him, and rested there with the confi- 
dence of perfect faith, and the joyousness of inex- 
itinguishable hope. 
Having, then, in such an imperfect manner as 
the great difficulty of the task, and the smallness of 
my own skill, has permitted, put before the reader 



[285] 



LOVE 

such of my friend's thoughts as seemed to me to 
show best the steps by which he arrived at this 
conviction, it only remains for me to add a few 
notes in which are expressed some of his thoughts 
about that life of love which both his thinking and 
his spiritual experience led him to regard as the 
true life for man. 

I have accordingly gleaned from his MSS. such 
jottings and fragments as seemed to me most fully 
to reveal his feelings and convictions — the complete- 
ness of his satisfaction, the bright and joyful sere- 
nity which diffused itself over his whole life, and 
the calm and trustful confidence with which he met 
life's trials and faced life's mystery. 

The reader will doubtless have caught some by 
no means uncertain notes in this strain sounded in 
some of the extracts I have already given; but he 
will not, I trust, deem these additional ones super- 
fluous, or regard them as forming an unfitting end- 
ing to this record. 

The following meditation on love may fairly 
claim the first place : — 

"The depths of the living spirit of man can be 
fathomed by no intellectual plummet. The mind is 
the organ of the spirit, and cannot comprehend it. 
Thought mirrors, but cannot measure, life. Let the 
intellect bluster as it will, and give itself airs of 
superiority, it is still only a servant; let it pry as it 
will into the secrets of its master, there are some it 
will never be able to discover. To depict life in 
terms of thought has been man's endeavour from 
the earliest times ; in every age he has renewed 

[286] 






LOVE 

the attempt, only to find anew that he is attempting 
the impossible. 

"Under the vague terms 'feeling' and 'emotion,' 
with which Philosophy endeavours to hide her 
inability to comprehend the deeper regions of the 
nature of man, is included by far the most important 
half of his conscious life. All that is central and 
fundamental to the ego is embraced in these terms; 
all the unfathomable depths and incomprehensible 
fulness of personality — of the soul of man — lies 
behind them. 

"If, then, we enter this region, and endeavour 
to set forth in words our conceptions concerning 
it — to mirror in thought some features of this soul- 
life — our failure to do justice to it is a foregone 
conclusion. In this inexhaustible mine Thought 
has quarried since the dawn of time ; the vast and 
varied literature of the world is the result of this 
quarrying ; yet is the vein as far as ever from being 
worked out, for the soul of man is infinite. 

"Of all the feelings and emotions which belong 
to this region of man's being, that which we denom- 
inate 'love' holds the highest rank. 

"We cannot define this feeling. It is an original 
and fundamental capacity of the personality; a 
primary instinct of the ego; a faculty native and 
peculiar to the soul. 

"There is only one other spiritual capacity which 
will bear comparison with it, namely faith ; but the 
two are only parts of one indivisible whole — differ- 
ent sides of the central energy of the spirit. In 
thought it is possible, and even necessary, to dis- 
tinguish them ; but in life they are invariably united. 

[287] 



LOVE 

"Faith is that portion of the Soul's activity which, 
working downward, buries itself in fact, and, rooted 
there, affords a firm basis on which the other por- 
tion — the active life of love — can rest, and freely 
exercise itself. Faith is the unseen portion of the 
Soul's bark, which keeps her steady as she rides on 
the sea of life. Or is the hidden rock, firmly 
planted, on which the light of love securely and 
perpetually burns. But the ship is one, whether por- 
tions of it be above or below the water; and were 
there no rock there would be no light. 

"Love, the upward and active portion of the 
Soul's energy, is the supreme power and the supreme 
need of man's nature. It is a craving deeper than 
all other cravings, a want which embraces all other 
wants. There is no form of human activity in 
which you cannot trace the presence of this energy 
of the spirit, this Soul-hunger, this passion and need 
of love. 

"Love is essentially a personal relationship. 
Only in a person can it find a fit object on which to 
lavish its wealth; only from a living spirit can it 
derive the satisfaction for which it craves. 

"This is an eternal and infinite truth — the truth 
of life. But it is a truth which man has been slow 
to apprehend. Few have attained to the knowledge 
of it, even in the lower walks of life — even with 
regard to human love ; and only a few here and 
there, of all the world's countless millions, have 
aprehended it in the inexhaustible regions of the 
Divine Love. 

"For, as we behold it in life, love rarely attains 
to the highest degree of purity and nobility, and it 

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LOVE 

rarely finds that which will alone give it true and 
lasting satisfaction. Whether it fixes its gaze on 
finite beings or on the Infinite Being — whether it 
seeks to satisfy itself with the wealth of a kindred 
soul, or with the wealth which the Eternal Love 
outpours so bountifully and unceasingly upon 
humanity — it rarely penetrates to essentials; it 
rarely fastens itself upon what is eternal and im- 
mutable. It is attracted and ensnared by externals. 
It seeks satisfaction in the form, not in the sub- 
stance; in the outward beauty, not in the inward 
grace; in what is material, not in what is spiritual; 
in what is earthly, not in what is heavenly. 

"Hence the world's misery and unrest. It is 
the result of this fatal folly; it is the inevitable 
consequence of the misuse of Heaven's noblest 
gift — of man's foul sin in selling his birthright for a 
mess of pottage. 

"The spirit hungers for love. But even as in that 
love which it displays towards the finite objects of 
its choice, it too often attempts to nourish itself on 
superficial and transitory characteristics, instead of 
rooting itself in fundamental spiritual excellences, 
so is it with the Infinite Object of its choice, which 
displays itself to the hungry soul in all the bound- 
less material, intellectual, and spiritual wealth which 
man beholds in the universe. 

"The Soul, beholding the apparently inexhaust- 
ible riches of the sphere which first meets her gaze, 
and feeling what capacity she has for disporting 
herself in it, grows proud. She fancies that she is 
a god, self-contained. She falls in love with her- 
self. 'What need have I to look beyond myself?' 

[ 2 8 9 ] 



LOVE 

she cries : 'will not these servants of mine — my body 
and my mind — supply my utmost need?' 

"And so she sets them seeking for that where- 
with to satisfy herself. Urged by the wild hunger 
within, she pursues phantoms — pleasure, or wealth, 
or fame — which she vainly supposes will be able to 
satisfy her supreme need. In her huge self-delu- 
sion, she will not believe that they are phantoms, 
though they vanish as she clasps them. In her 
insane self-love, she still believes she can satisfy 
herself thus, though every bubble bursts as she 
touches it. 

"O foolish soul! to think that by thus grasping 
at the mantle of the Eternal, while all the time 
thine eyes are turned upon thyself, and thou seest 
not the Divine Form enshrouded in it, nor art con- 
scious of the Living Heart which beats beneath it, 
thou canst steal the virtue which shall soothe and 
heal thy woes ! Thou art doomed to wander 
through the universe, seeking rest and finding none, 
till thou hast learnt to forget thyself — till thou hast 
lost thy life in the lives of thy brother men, and in 
the life of Him who gave His life for thee ! 

"Not but that the outward and material has its 
uses. In its fitting time and place it can do the 
Soul noble service. Not all at once does man — 
the heir of the Infinite — become acquainted with 
his own capacities, or apprehend the full measure 
and extent of the wealth which is his birthright. 
Heaven makes no haste. She gives her nursling a 
long education, and inducts him slowly into the 
fulness of life which she has in store for him. She 
long detains him in the outer courts of her temple, 

[290] 






LOVE 

and occupies his attention with her gaudier and 
less precious treasures. 'First that which is natural, 
afterwards that wihch is spiritual,' is the great law 
of human development. Therefore is it right that 
tjeauty and superficial characteristics should first 
attract the lover to the maid, and that the world of 
matter and not . the world of spirit should first 
engross the attention of the budding soul. 

"But outward shows — mere clothing and gar- 
niture — whether of finite spirit or of the Infinite 
Spirit, cannot satisfy the cravings of the Soul of 
man. They only serve to point the way to the 
inner temple — to the Living Reality which they 
•enshrine. 

" 'Love born of beauty soon as beauty dies,' 

unless it has, before this inevitable decay of the 
outward has occurred, discovered and transferred 
its devotion to that inward and spiritual beauty 
which can never die — unless it has discovered the 
Living, Immortal Spirit clothed in the beauty of 
holiness, and palpitating with the rapturous throb- 
"bings of undying love. 

"This alone is the goal of love ; nothing short 
of this can satisfy the hunger of the Soul, whether 
the finite or the Infinite be the object of its desire. 
It cannot satisfy itself with things; it cannot 
nourish itself upon externals — upon the types and 
shadows of the Real. It must find a Living Heart, 
dowered with a wealth of affection, animated by a 
passion of longing equal to its own. Love alone 
can satisfy the cravings of love — love, which is the 

[291] 



LOVE 

unique and peculiar endowment of the living spirit 
of man. 

" 'Clothed in the beauty of holiness,' I said ; for 
some vesture the Soul must wear, some form she 
must assume, in order to body forth her incompre- 
hensible essence. 

"And that vesture is most fitting which most 
completely and beautifully clothes her; that form is 
noblest which most fully and perfectly reveals her. 
And beauty (which is truth objectified — spiritual 
harmonies made visible) is present in any thing or 
any person in proportion to the degree in which 
that thing or person expresses Truth — in proportion 
to the fulness with which that in which we see the 
beauty to be is capable of rendering the harmonies 
of being. 

"And of all the Spirit's vestures the most com- 
plete is character. Of all the visible forms by 
means of which she can express the harmonies of 
her life, this is the most capable of expressing them, 
and therefore the most susceptible of beauty. 

"For character is the garment which, by the 
inexhaustible power of its living will, the Spirit is 
continually weaving, and it is beautiful in proportion 
as the Spirit, wills in harmony with Truth. There- 
fore is holiness — which is the spirit's sympathetic 
vibration in harmony with the eternal truth of the 
Eternal Will — the highest and completest form of 
beauty. 

"Hence it is only when the Soul finds that, that 
she can contemplate her object with pure delight; 
it is only when she expresses herself thus that she 
can reveal all the wealth of her nature. 

[292] 






LOVE 

"But alas for the Soul ! Alas for Love ! Her 
development is too often arrested; she too often 
never attains her birthright, never finds that price- 
less treasure — a living, holy, answering love. 

"Instead of allowing physical beauty — the Spirit's 
outward garb and material embodiment — to usher 
her into the holiest of all — to bring her face to 
face with the Living Fact — the Soul lingers in the 
outer courts. She is ensnared by the outward and 
visible. She lusts instead of loves. She tries to 
feed on husks instead of on the Heaven-prepared 
manna of love; and in consequence presents in her 
relations with the finite object of her choice the 
sorrowful spectacle of marriages without affection, 
and homes in which the light of love never shines 
and in relation with the Infinite, love of the 
world, and the mad endeavour to grasp the things 
which it has to offer, instead of love for that Eternal 
Spirit who all the time is holding her in His arms, 
and yearning with unutterable longing to win her 
love, and to make her a partaker in all the inex- 
haustible riches of His heart. 

"I have said that love is a personal relationship, 
and have been keeping in view, and placing side 
by side, the two objects on which it can worthily 
fix its attention — the finite spirit and the Infinite 
Spirit. 

"But let it not be supposed that they have an 
equal claim on Love's regard, or are both equally 
capable of satisfying her need. 

"Sweet is human love — when two souls are 'one' 
in a rapturous harmony which, without break or 
flaw, pervades the entire being of each ; when heart 

[293] 



LOVE 

beats in sympathy with heart, and in the minds of 
each 

" 'Thought leaps out to wed with thought. 
Ere thought can wed itself to speech!' 

"We will throw no disparagement on human 
love; we will assign no limits to its fulness; 
we will not attempt to measure its surpassing 
sweetness. But the Soul has infinite cravings,, 
which no finite being can satisfy. Not on even 
the most perfect human affection can it securely 
rest; not in even the most loving of human hearts 
can it find a home. 

"The Soul has no haven of rest but the heart 
of the Eternal. Its birthright is the right to com- 
mune with the Infinite Love, and with this alone 
can it be satisfied. 

"Talk of satisfying it with a world, with a 
universe, with all the infinite material with which 
the Time-Spirit weaves the garments of the Eternal,, 
or all the treasures of thought which it lavishes on 
their construction ! Why, you cannot even satisfy 
it with all the immeasurable wealth of love which 
is stored up in all the souls that God has made ! 

"God alone can satisfy the wants of the SouL 
His Infinite love alone suffices for her infinite need. 
Let her wander where she will, let her strive to 
find a home where she will, she can never find it 
except in the heart of God. 

"And it is for this reason that human love — 
love, the type — never reaches its greatest fulness, 
never experiences its richest sweetness, till it is sup- 
plemented by the Divine Love — love, the anti-type. 

[294] 



LOVE 

"This is the supreme attraction which enables 
two souls — like two suns — to circle round each 
other in perfect harmony, while at the same time 
they are like two wandering stars which madly 
dash through space, they know not whither, till 
suddenly the dark orb of death sweeps over their 
path and separates them ; one is taken, and the other 
left: they lose sight of each other in the darkness, 
and henceforward fare on apart and lonely forever. 

"But rendered immortal by a mutual love centered 
in the Infinite Love, human love never dies. Why 
should they who thus love fear the brief eclipse 
of death? Is not the beloved one who is taken in 
the Everlasting Arms, even as is the one who is 
left? Have they not both still all the wealth of the 
Everlasting Love to satisfy their need? Do they 
not know that Love has separated them for a time, 
in order that it may increase a thousand-fold the 
sweetness of their love for each other and for it? 
Yes; for a time they are called to sojourn in differ- 
ent mansions of their Father's house ; but the house 
is their Father's, and the call is the call of love. 

"This, then, is life — even the life of love. For 
this the soul was created, to this Heaven is cease- 
lessly striving to lead it. 

"To demonstrate the beauty, and the joy fulness, 
and the satisfyingness of this life, the Eternal has- 
filled the world with innumerable types and illustra- 
tions of it, the chief of which is human love. By 
means of these the Soul is enabled to realize to some 
extent how full and how blessed is the life which she 
has been created to enjoy. 

"But the picture-alphabet of love which these 

[295] 






LOVE 

types present only enables man to learn love's sim- 
plest words and easiest sentences — only enables him 
faintly to apprehend what life is. Life in its fulness 
they cannot represent, because the fulness of the 
Eternal Love is measureless. 

"But if any man craves for a completer picture 
— a more perfect type — of the Infinite Life and 
Love, let him look to the Teacher of Nazareth, let 
him explore the depths of the heart of the Man 
Christ Jesus." 

Without comment I proceed to give further selec- 
tions treating of the same theme. 

"The mystery of the love of God manifested in 
Jesus Christ has two sides, but only one can be seen ; 
it is an infinite orb. but it only shows us one face. 

"Behind the face which we see, we know that 
there exists the measureless volume of the orb ; nay, 
we can even compute what its volume is, or at any 
rate determine that it is incomputably great. But 
we can never see it. Like the moon in its circling 
round the earth, wherever and whenever we look on 
it we are always contemplating the same face. We 
can feel the solid volume behind the attractive power 
which it exerts upon us ; but, strive as we may, we 
cannot catch any glimpse of it save one. No light 
comes from the Being of God except that which 
shines in the face of Jesus Christ.* 

"No light, I say. Nevertheless, it is necessary 

* My friend, I am convinced, did not intend this state- 
ment to be taken absolutely. He freely admitted that 
"broken gleams" of God are to be seen in Nature and in 
Humanity, but these, he held, are all included in the 
Christ-revelation. 

[296] 



LOVE 

that we should recognize the fact that the solid 
volume of the orb is there — that the face is not a 
flat disc, but the surface of an infinite sphere ; that 
immeasurable depths of substance are behind the 
appearance; that the life and the love which Jesus 
Christ manifested are a manifestation of the life and 
the love of an Eternal and Infinite Being. 

"The necessity of this was clearly recognized by 
the New Testament writers. Though they rightly 
laid most stress on the revelation, they did not fail 
to keep in mind the Eternal Fact which it revealed 
— the Living Reality from which it originated. 

"That Eternal Fact,that Living Reality is the 
heart of the Eternal — the love of God. That is the 
solid orb which the face reveals, without which 
there could have been no face — no revelation. 

"And this, though it has been often ignored since, 
the New Testament writers, as I have said, were 
always careful to keep in mind. 

" 'God so loved the world, that He gave His only 
begotten Son.' 'He spared not His own Son, but 
delivered Him up for us all.' 'God commendeth 
His love towards us, in that while we were yet sin- 
ners, Christ died for us.' Tn this was manifested 
the love of God towards us, because that God 
sent His only begotten Son into the world that we 
might live through Him.' 

"Thus do they keep in mind the hidden volume 
of this mystery of love ; thus do they recognize that 
great, incomprehensible fact of the self-renuncia- 
tion of the Eternal — that everlasting, unfathom- 
able truth of His Life which has its completest mani- 
festation in the cross of Jesus Christ. 

[297] 



LOVE 

"It has been the failure to keep this truth in mind 
which has allowed room for so many partial and 
erroneous doctrines of the atonement to be formu- 
lated. There is hardly a single theory on this sub- 
ject before the world at the present time which does 
adequate justice to this fact of the Life of God. 
The recognition of this prime factor at once renders 
untenable those views of the atonement which have 
generally been accepted, and necessitates important 
modifications in those truer but still inadequate ones 
which of late years have been steadily gaining 
ground. 

"As a prime factor in the problem of the atone- 
ment, the love of God has never yet received 
adequate recognition ; God's love has generally 
been regarded as divisible by His justice. But that 
is as absurd as it is untrue. A part cannot compre- 
hend the whole. Love embraces justice, not justice 
love ; the ultimate truth of the Being of God is not 
that He is just, but that He is living, palpitating, 
self-renouncing Love. 

"When this fact (that a passionate self-renuncia- 
tion is the ultimate truth of the Life of God) is once 
apprehended, the atonement (at-one-ment, be it 
ever remembered) is seen in an altogether new 
light. It can no longer be regarded as a dead, 
mechanical thing — a cold-blooded, judicial arrange- 
ment : it becomes instinct with life. It is seen to 
be a Personal self-sacrifice, the giving up of Himself 
by the Living God who is Spirit on behalf of the 
spirits he has made. No types or images, therefore, 
are adequate to body it forth except those which 
human life affords. It is a giving up of self, such a 

[298] 



LOVE 

willing, conscious selfsurrender as that of which 
human hearts alone are capable. 

"To know what this Life of Love, which is the 
Life of God, is in its fulness, is impossible. It is 
infinite; unfathomably deep and wide and high; 
through all eternity we shall not be able to exhaust 
its heights and depths. That is the mystery of Love 
— the mystery of Life, the darksicle of the orb. But 
what it is in its nature and essence we can know. 
For it was enshrined once in a living human Heart, 
it was manifested once in a living Self-sacrifice. It 
'was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld 
the glory of it, even glory as of an Only Begotten 
from a Father, full of grace and truth.' 

"What measureless love that Heart contained, 
what depths of self-renunciation that Self-sacrifice 
exhibited, the world has been recognizing more and 
more fully as the ages have moved on. The world 
is coming to see that there, and there alone, is a 
satisfactory and satisfying Manifestation of the 
Eternal. It is being brought to acknowledge that 
all the light of the knowledge of the glory of God 
shines in the face of Jesus Christ. It is learning to 
gauge the depths of the Divine Love by the depths 
of Christ's self-renunciation, and is continually find- 
ing afresh that they are measurelessly deep." 

"Nature cannot fully reveal the fact that God is 
love. 

"That is to say, she cannot testify to that truth 
with the fulness and clearness which man's capacities 
demand. Man can comprehend that truth in a thou- 
sandfold greater fulness than any with which Nature 

[299] 



LOVE 

is capable of revealing it, and consequently her ex- 
pressions of it fail to give him complete satisfaction, 
— nay, in many cases bewilder and perplex him. 

"This, indeed, is inevitable until he sees the Truth 
embodied in a form suited to his capacities and 
needs, and reads by its fuller light the partial revela- 
tion of the truth which Nature gives. Till he has 
thus seen the truth bodied forth with satisfying 
fulness, he cannot possibly interpret the hieroglyph- 
ics in which Nature writes it for him. 

"The only manifestation of the Fact of Love 
which can satisfy the soul of man must appear in a 
human soul. That is the only medium through 
which the Eternal Love can display itself with a 
fulness at all worthy of itself, and at all adequate 
to the satisfying of human needs. 

"And it has thus revealed itself in the Man 
Christ Jesus. There we see the fact revealed with 
a fulness and clearness which leaves nothing to be 
desired, which satisfies our deepest longings, meets 
our loftiest conceptions, realizes our heavenliest 
dreams, and enables us to decipher Nature's other- 
wise illegible inscriptions. 

"It is the failure to lay hold of the truth as thus 
revealed, and the exclusive fixing of the attention 
on those imperfect manifestations of it which 
Nature gives, which has led so many men in these 
days to such despairing conclusions concerning 
Nature's God. 

" 'Nature, red in tooth and claw 

With ravine, shrieks against the creed' 

[that God is love], Tennyson sings; and from the 

[30°] 



LOVE 

standpoint from which he was writing this must 
ever appear to be the truth. 

"No one by a scientific examination of Nature 
can ever hope to arrive at satisfying conclusions 
concerning the Eternal. The form which the Fact 
of Love takes in Nature must ever appear more to 
contradict than to affirm the truth ; till the tropes 
and metaphors, and strange and startling disguises 
in which it is therein enshrouded are read in the 
light of Love's perfect Manifestation. 

"Such views therefore as the poet, — in a mood 
produced by sorrow, but nevertheless depicting 
most faithfully the spirit of the age, gives expression 
to in the lines quoted above, or which John Stuart 
Mill embodies in his 'Essay on Nature,' need neither 
surprise nor alarm us. They are what we should 
naturally expect from men whose hearts and minds 
have not been illuminated by the light of a satisfying 
love. They are ignorant guesses at hieroglyphics 
which they have attempted to read without possess- 
ing the clue to their meaning; they are attempts to 
open the door of spiritual truth without a key. 

"How differently, in the light of the higher 
truth in which He lived, did Jesus Christ read Na- 
ture ! To Him she spoke not of cruelty and wrong, 
but of goodness and love. The beauty of the grass 
was a beauty which His Father had given it; the lilies 
were His Father's care; and He watched the dying 
of the sparrows without a pang, because He knew 
that not one of them fell to the ground without His 
Father's knowledge. Thus Nature to Him bore 
perpetual witness to the truth of God's Fatherhood. 
He read that sublime fact in every line of the vis- 

[301] 






LOVE 

ible creation ; the whole universe was an illustration, 
infinitely varied and exquisitely harmonized, of that 
fundamental truth. 

"No man who has neglected to utilize his spirit- 
ual faculties, and who has failed to establish a cor- 
respondence with the Spiritual Environment, i.e. 
failed to enter into a communion with the God who 
is Spirit similar to that which Jesus Christ had, and 
which He showed to be possible to man — no man 
who does not thus live up to the level of his capa- 
bilities, can hope to interpret aright Nature's mani- 
festations of the Eternal Spiritual Fact. When 
the heart knows God as Father, the mind will learn 
to read more and more clearly the poem of love 
which is written in Nature, and will derive inex- 
haustible delight from the apprehension of the glor- 
ious truth which in such innumerable forms and with 
such a boundless wealth of illustration, is therein 
expressed. 

"But not till then! Of itself, unaided by the 
heart, the mind can never understand it : and if the 
heart does not seek and find satisfaction where 
alone it can be found, but vainly leans on the mind, 
its cry for light will meet with no response from a 
universe in which, as the mind reads it, the clearest 
embodiment of the truth of Love is to be found in 
the reign of stern, inexorable law." 

"Love is energy of giving. In whatever form 
and in whatever degree it is manifested, this is a 
fundamental characteristic of love — a giving up, a 
sacrifice, a dying. 

"No man can apprehend the nature of love till he 

[302] 



LOVE 

has grasped that truth. Nay, till it has become a 
vital truth to him, no man can be said to live. His 
own being, and the being of creation, must continue 
a riddle to him until they are illuminated by that 
Divine truth. For 

" 'Life is energy of love.' 

"Living, loving, and giving all mean the same : 
they are simply different methods of expressing the 
truth concerning Being, Spirit, The Real, The 
Eternal Fact, That Which Is, which in innumerable 
ways, and in many different degrees of fulness, 
takes form in the universe. 

"The possibilities of life vary with the capabil- 
ities for giving expression to love — that is, for 
giving. And herein consists the difference between 
man and the rest of Nature, in that he is capable 
of higher forms of sacrifice — diviner dyings — than 
any other part of the creation. 

"Man alone is capable of self-sacrifice, voluntary 
renunciation, conscious self-surrender: Being in 
creation, and part of it, he yet stands above it and 
aloof from it in virtue of his self-consciousness — 
that highest and boldest mode in which the Eternal 
Fact objectifies itself — losing itself in finite person- 
alities, that it may find itself again in hearts that 
throb with conscious love. 

"That this losing of itself has even gone as far 
as the self-isolation of those thus endowed, is a fact 
to which the present state of man abundantly tes- 
tifies. But could this stupendous embodiment of 
love have been accomplished without this stupend- 
ous loss? Without this utter self-surrender of the 

[303] 



LOVE 

Infinite Life — this complete throwing away of 
itself in finite personalities — could the rapturous 
finding of itself again in spirits which call it 'Father' 
be possible to it ? 

"We touch here an unfathomable mystery, which 
the mind of man is not capable of comprehending. 
To some such outpouring of itself — some such 
infinite self-abnegation on the part of that Eternal 
Energy of Love which is the Cause of all things 
the Life of life, the, Great I Am — must we ulti- 
mately trace the origin of the universe and man. 
But we cannot grasp so stupendous a thought : when 
we come to formulate it, it shrivels up into concep- 
tions whose inadequacy is painfully apparent — as of 
a God playing at hide-and-seek with Himself, or of 
One who is nothing more than an infinite being. 

"Let us leave matters which are too high for us. 
Let it suffice us that a Living Love has created us, 
and endowed us with some of its own Divine En- 
ergy, thereby enabling us consciously to share in the 
fulness of its own rapturous Life." 

"The difference between man's possibilities of 
life, and the possibilities of the rest of the creation. 
is expressed in the word 'self.' Man is nobler than 
Nature by how much ^//-sacrifice is nobler than 
unconscious and involuntary surrender. The 
heights of life to which a man can soar transcend the 
limits imposed on the rest of the creation by how 
much voluntary giving exceeds involuntary sacrifice. 

"For all Nature's life is tuned to the key-note of 
sacrifice; but the sacrifice is not conscious and vol- 
untary, but blind and unintelligent. That which 

[304] 



LOVE 

is the peculiar characteristic of humanity beng ab- 
sent, love perforce is obliged to take the form of law 
— to manifest itself in an unbroken and necessi- 
tated orderliness, which rules the entire life of those 
beneath its sway. There is no room for spontaneity, 
no room for choice. There is surrender, but not 
self -surrender ; a continual dying, but not a con- 
scious participation and a joyful acquiescence in the 
act. The surrender is either wholly mechanical and 
voluntary, or it is accomplished in opposition to, 
not in sympathy with, the feelings of that which 
surrenders itself. 

"In only a few — a very few — cases does 
sacrifice in Nature seem to ally itself to the 
voluntariness of human self-sacrifice. In the ma- 
jority of creatures no harmony can be traced be- 
tween the instinct of life, and this grand law which 
rules it, and their surrender is made in fear and 
pain, unaccompanied by that glad submission which 
is possible to man, and which enables him to appre- 
hend the law as good, and willingly to co-operate 
with it, and joyfully to live by it. 

"These peculiarites of the forms, and these limi- 
tations of the fulness, in which the Fact of Love 
bodies itself forth in Nature, are necessitated by the 
material through which it works. 

"Whatever 'matter' may be, and whether it have 
any real existence or not, it is certain that the 
Eternal objectifies Himself in it with less complete- 
ness than that for which humanity craves ; that man 
is capable of apprehending Him more clearly, and 
of sympathizing with Him more fully, than His 
revelation of Himself in Nature permits of. 

[305] 



LOVE 

"Nature is only the outer skirt of the Eternal, 
and it were to be expected that the outer garments 
of the Ineffable Spirit would be spread with an 
easy gracefulness which would permit of no minute 
delineation of that which they enshrine. Material 
things are the lowest forms in which He objectifies 
Himself, and it were to be expected that His lowest 
projections into the sphere of time and space would 
b>ut partially reveal His infinite fulness. Neverthe- 
less, under the limitations thus imposed, the Fact of 
Love manifests that energy which is its fundamental 
characteristic with startling clearness and with un- 
broken universality. 

"The atoms are called to surrender themselves — 
i.e. their individuality — in order to form compound 
substances. The soil is called to give itself up in 
order to nourish life in tree and plant. These, 
in turn, are called to surrender themselves in order 
to give support to animal life, and a large portion of 
the animal kingdom is supported by the death of liv- 
ing creatures. Go where we will in Nature, we find 
this law of surrender in operation. It is a world, as 
has been well said, where every thing eats every- 
thing else — a fact which may well appal when the 
nature of the Law of Love, which is the Law of 
Life, is not understood, but which can be viewed 
calmly when this law has been apprehended, and the 
heart and the life have been brought into joyful 
harmony with it, by contemplating and adoring the 
infinite beauty and sublimity of that completest man- 
ifestation of self-renouncing love which history 
records — the most Divine self-sacrifice of which the 

[306] 



LOVE 

mind can conceive — the death of the Man Christ 
Jesus." 

After some hesitation, I have decided to insert 
riere a poem which I have found among my friend's 
MSS. I have hesitated to do so because I am not 
sure if its artistic merit is sufficient to warrant its 
insertion; but the thought which it attempts to ex- 
press is identical with that expressed in the pre- 
vious note, and is, I think, sufficiently remarkable to 
justify me in giving the reader this further expres- 
sion of it. 

"A SONG OF DOUBT AND FAITH. 

"He sat with blue waves breaking 

In foam at his feet, 
Wooing the rocks, and making 

Harmony sweet. 
The west wind gently was blowing 

Fresh from the sea. 
The Sun overhead was showing 

How bright he could be; 
The birds around him were singing, 

Happy and gay; 
Flowers beside him were flinging 

Their odours away. 
And his soul was filled with the gladness, 

The beauty and light, 
And sorrow and unrest and sadness 

For a time took flight. 
And lifting his heart in thanksgiving 

To the Maker of all, 
He cried, 'Thou Supreme, Ever-living, 

Creator! I fall 
At Thy feet, and adore Thee and praise Thee, 

And, feeling 'tis meet, 

[307] 



LOVE 

I too in this hour upraise Thee 

An offering sweet. 
For oft though Thy footsteps are hidden 

From Thy creatures' eyes, 
And doubts of Thy goodness, unbidden, 

In our minds arise, 
Yet surely the earth, sky, and ocean — 

Could our ears catch the strain, 
And, amid the world's restless commotion, 

Hear the glad refrain — 
One glorious chant of laudation 

Perpetually raise, 
And the voice of Thy boundless creation 

Is unbroken praise.' 

"But cloud-wrack stealthily floated 

Across the sky, 
And a blast of wind, which denoted 

A storm drawing nigh, 
Swept the Sea, now hueless, and heaving 

Like a monster laid prone, 
Her sad waves the hushed stillness cleaving 

With 'plaining and moan. 
The trees, their pendant leaves rustling, 

Perpetually sighed; 
The kine in the field-corners hustling, 

Sniffed the air, helpless-eyed; 
The flowers ceased dispensing their sweetness 

And hung their heads down; 
While, to consummate the completeness 

Of Nature's deep frown, 
The birds, in the thickets remaining, 

Dead silence kept, 
To utter one chirrup disdaining, 

While the skies wept, 
And, as if bemoaning the madness 

Of the lightning and rain, 
All Nature an air took of sadness 

And unrest and pain. 

[308] 






LOVE 

"And he looked, and he saw that the ocean, 

With fuming and roar, 
With angry and savage commotion, 

Was gnawing the shore: 
And he thought how the bee robs the flowers, 

How the birds eat the flies, 
How the hawk the weak bird overpowers, 

How everything dies: 
He thought how with pains, woes, and terrors, 

With strife and unrest, 
The whole world — which God's nature mirrors 

Is ceaseless oppressed: 
And he cried, 'Thou mysterious, frightful, 

Inscrutable Power, 
If Thy world which awhile seemed delightful, 

Can change in an hour; 
If pain is concealed beneath gladness, 

And death beneath life; 
If Nature's deep undertone sadness 

Proclaimeth, and strife; 
If Death the supporter of Life is, 

The pitiless claw 
The emblem of Being; if strife is 

Existence's law; — 
Is it possible righteous to deem Thee 

Or loving or good, 
When such in Thy works I behold Thee, 

And such Nature's mood?' 

"But the raging hurricane thundered 

Itself to rest; 
Th' opposing cloud-armies sundered; 

The brightening west 
Grew into a splendour of glory 

And wonder untold, 
Transmuting the cloud-masses hoary 

To crimson and gold; 
The voluminous folds of the cloud-wrack 
Piled themselves in the east; 

[309] 



LOVE 

The wind-driven thunder-king flashed back 

Defiance, then ceased; 
The victorious Sun, with a splendour 

Of colour and light 
Too brilliant for artist to render — 

Dazzling the sight — 
Bathed the heavens with gold and carnation, 

Lit earth with its rays, 
And summoned the whole of Creation 

To worship and praise. 
The trees, their foliage glistening, 

Laughed rosy red; 
The grasses and flowers, standing listening,, 

Tears of joy shed; 
The birds, their voices upraising, 

Sang with delight, 
The poem Heaven wrote with amazing 

Radiance of light. 
And when, to his ocean-bed sinking, 

The Sun kissed the sea, 
And the stars peeped out one by one, blinking 

Such splendour to see, 
As a pathway of glory and brightness 

The dancing waves paved — 
The waves, which earth's warm feet with lightness 

Fondled and laved: 
As he saw that the heavens without ceasing 

Gave themselves to the earth, 
Thereby bringing ever-increasing 

Glory to birth; 
As he saw that in giving, rejoicing, 

The flowers lived and loved; 
That the birds, the same key-note voicing, 

Sacrifice proved; 
As he saw that the insect which sported 

On the wind's breath 
Rejoiced while it lived, and supported 

Life by its death; 

[3IO] 



LOVE 

As he noted that Life's pulses ever 

Beat fervent and warm, 
But continually strove to dissever 

Themselves from one form ; 
As he saw that a vast tide of Being 

Through all things flowed, 
But stayed not— a strict law decreeing 

Life to Life owed; 
As he saw with a passion for giving 

The whole world possessed; — 
The Creator's great 'Secret of Living' 

Upon his soul pressed, 
And he cried, "O Perpetual Dispenser 

Of wondrous Life! 
Tho' the longer we gaze the intenser 

Appeareth the strife, 
And the heavy travail of Creation 

Revealed to our sight; 
Though, when scorning attempts at evasion, 

And striving aright 
To read what Thy Cosmos revealeth, 

To confess we are fain 
The chorus of praise scarce concealeth 

The loud shriek of pain; 
Tho' Death strongest Life overpowers 

Since everything dies; — 
Yet still, when these weak minds of ours 

Are strongest, we rise 
To the hope — to the heart faith is given 

Which leads us to trust — 
That Thou, the Creator of heaven 

And earth, art just; 
And if Thy Creation's full chorus 

Upon our ears burst, 
And we heard the sphere-music o'er us 

Resounding, as erst, 
When the morning stars all in union 

Sang and rejoiced, 

[311] 



LOVE 

And their music the heavenly communion 

Echoed, full-voiced; 
If we the harsh discords our feeling 

Alone can surmise 
Could adjust to the symphony pealing 

Along the skies; — 
Then surely the word to proclaim Thee 

Human lips could not frame, 
The Name alone worthy to name Thee 

Would be a supreme Name: 
Our loftiest, noblest conceptions 

Of what Thou art 
Would be reckoned but trembling reflections — 

(Such as impart 
Slow rippling waters kissed by 

A wind distressed 
Of some hill, when enveloping mists lie 

Upon its crest) 
So dim, so devoid of completeness, 

We then should confess 
Our thoughts of Thee, matched with the sweetness 

Of Thy perfectness. 

:< 'I this evening have caught one harmonious, 

One perfect note 
From Infinite Being's euphonious, 

Clear-voiced throat; 
One chord of the music of Being 

Has struck on my ear, 
My mind from uncertainty freeing, 

My heart from fear. 
I see that the key-note of Being 

Assuredly lies, 
By a law of Thy perfect decreeing, 

In self-sacrifice: 
I see that unceasing giving 

Is Nature's chief bliss, 
The innermost secret of living 

Self-forgetfulness : 

[312] 



LOVE 

And discern (tho' the links of connection 

I cannot prove) 
The whole great world a reflection 

Of Thy Heart of Love. 

" 'Yes, Love! To this final conclusion 

I rise (or I fall) : 
'Tis a faith : if it be a delusion — 

If the facts which appal, 
Which I see in Creation around me, 

True indices are 
Of Thy character — if Thou hast bound me 

(Thou sitting afar, 
Enjoying the sound of my wailing, 

The sight of my pain) 
To a world where perpetual railing, 

Tho' hopelessly vain, 
Were the only fit adoration 

On Thee to bestow, 
Who hast made Love my proper vocation, 

And chained me to woe, — 
Then I curse Thee, Thou terrible Power, 

I curse and defy, 
Defy Thee as hour by hour 

I miserably die! 
Defy Thee throughout all the ages 

Of infinite time, 
With curses pay Thee the wages 
Due to Thy crime! 
" 'But I will not believe that delusion 
And error and wrong 
Are the keys which unlock the confusion 

Of earth. I am strong 
(Strong or weak) to hope and believe 

Thou hast made us for bliss; 
That Thy creatures Thou wilt not deceive; 

That benevolence is 
The master-note of Thy Being; 
That Nature but proves 

[313] 



LOVE 

(In figures too vast for our seeing) 

How Thy Heart loves. 
For Love is continual giving — 

Perpetually dies — 
Discovers the bliss of its living 

In self-sacrifice. 
There, I hold, there, if anywhere, lieth 

The key to Thy Life: 
Nature dies because Love ever dieth; 

Her ceaseless strife 
But mirrors Thy ceaseless endeavour 

Thyself to devote 
To the good ot Thy creatures forever. 

That is the note 
Which, with never a moment's cessation, 

By night and by day, 
The voice of Thy boundless creation 

Soundeth for aye; 
That is the note which resounded 

Full-toned and clear. 
When the Crown of Humanitj^ founded 

Heaven's kingdom here; 
Thine innermost Nature revealing, 

That was the note 
By His life, His teaching, His healing, 

Incessant He smote; 
That was the note which — defying 

Heaven and earth to compete — ■ 
He struck when He brought by His dying 

The world to His feet.' 

"He ceased. In the deep heavens o'er him 

Night's curtains were hung: 
In infinity's chambers before him 

Unnumbered lamps swung: 
The after-glow slowly was fading 

Out of the sky; 
But the west a faint light was still shading 

Delicately. 

[314] 



LOVE 

In the clear east a silvery whiteness 

Announced that soon 
The world with the floods of her brightness 

Would be bathed by the Moon. 
The earth slept; the sea, lulled to stillness, 

Reposed on the breast 
Of the shore, with the perfect tranquilness 

Of dreamless rest. 
Peace reigned supreme on the ocean, 

Peace on the shore, 
And peace in his heart, where commotion 

Had reigned before. 
Heaven's beauty and sweetness descended 

Softly as dew 
On his soul: the conflict was ended; 

He beheld the True. 
And the vision his spirit exalted 

Fear and doubt above; 
No longer he questioned and halted; 
He knew — God is Love." 

"The universe is a poem of love which God is 
writing, and, as far as it goes, every line is perfect. 
Every form, every motion and change, every atom 
which goes to make up the phenomena which we 
call by that name, is in harmony with — is a mani- 
festation of — the Ultimate Fact of Being: Love. 

"The truth that God is Love, which we apprehend 
through the Christ-revelation, of necessity carries 
with it this corollary: No smallest fraction of the 
Great All which surrounds us can be out of harmony 
with — can be anything but a form of — the truth of 
Love. 

"If the material universe appears otherwise to 
us, the fault does not lie in it, but in ourselves: it 
is a proof of our blindness and deadness, not of its 

[315] 



LOVE 

imperfection. Its perfection is absolute ; there is no 
flaw, no discord in it. It is Love objectified, i.e. 
the form which the Ultimate Fact of Love takes to 
lis in virtue of our finiteness. Even thus and no 
otherwise can the Infinite orb itself to spirits condi- 
tioned like ourselves, in the present state of our 
development. 

"I say that if the material universe appears to 
us otherwise than as a poem of love, the fault lies 
in ourselves — in our blindness and deadness. 

"I cannot for a moment doubt the possibility of 
our being able to read every manifestation of the 
Non-Ego in the light of, and to harmonize it with, 
the highest truth concerning it which we are able to 
apprehend — the truth of Love. Love objectified it 
is, and love in every line of it we must be able to 
discover, who are able to apprehend the truth that 
God is Love. 

"But the God who is Love, who thus objectifies 
Himself, does not suit His manifestations to our 
imperfections, weaknesses, and sins, but to our 
capabilities and potentialities. 

"The universe is a revelation of truth, not as we 
do apprehend it, but as we may and can apprehend 
it. It is framed to delight and satisfy us when we 
exercise and rightly use all our faculties and powers, 
not when we misuse or fail to use them. In other 
words, the universe can only be apprehended as the 
manifestation of Love, and be seen in all its parts 
to be in harmony with this truth, by those who are 
fully alive — who have correspondence with it in all 
the ways of which human nature permits. Falling 
short of this, man must misread it ; its harmony must 

[316] 



LOVE 

appear to be discords, its light darkness. 

"It is only too evident that the vast majority of 
men do thus misread it. Very far from being a 
poem of love is the universe to most men ; very far 
are they from attaining to harmony in their rela- 
tions with it. 

"And they lay the blame on the universe, and 
harbour all sorts of doubts and fears concerning 
Him who made it. 

"Oh, foolish purblind men! Will you never be 
taught to look for the evil in yourself — to open 
your eyes to all the infinite wonder and beauty and 
Tightness which surround you; to live, instead of 
(as at present) miserably existing? 

"The universe is perfect as far as it goes — a poem 
of love, as I have said ; but it can only be under- 
stood by those who exercise the God-given faculty 
of faith, and who tune their being to the key-note 
of love. 

"And I am quite prepared to grant— indeed, it is 
clearly implied in the assertion that faith is neces- 
sary — that at present many lines, if not whole pages, 
of the poem cannot be understood even by the most 
loving heart. 

"Therefore I have been careful to qualify my 
assertion that 'the universe is a poem of love' by 
saying, 'as far as it goes.' 

"For there is abundant evidence that the poem 
is not yet completed. God is still writing it. He 
has furnished us with hints — nay, with clear indica- 
tions — as to its denoument; but not until that is 
accomplished shall we be able to understand how 
perfect every line has been which has led up to the 

[317] 



LOVE 

splendid consummation. At present we have to 
take much on trust ; not until we have attained to 
the liberty of the glory of the sons of God shall we 
be able fully to understand how right and necessary 
the 'subjection to vanity' and the groaning and 
travailing have been." 

"The mystery of pain has pressed heavily on in- 
numerable human hearts, and has been to many 
minds one of the greatest stumbling-blocks to the 
belief in the goodness of God. 

"When illuminated, however, by the light of love, 
it becomes a mystery not dark at all — except with 
excess of light. Far from detracting from the 
goodness of the Eternal, it reveals to us new and 
unfathomable depths of His glorious perfection. 

"That pain is an essential factor in the scheme 
of things of which we form a part, cannot be 
denied. No doctrine of 'the Fall,' no theory which 
considers it as merely the result of 'sin' — i. e. of the 
abuse or misuse of faculties and functions — can 
satisfactorily account for its existence. It is evi- 
dently an enduring peculiarity in the constitution of 
things — a fundamental characteristic of the uni- 
verse. Life has been created to endure pain as 
surely as to enjoy pleasure ; to suffer is as much its 
prerogative as to enjoy. 

"Much of the mystery in which pain is en- 
shrouded in the minds of the majority of men is 
due to the non-recognition of this fact. 

"Men have shut their eyes to the truth — they 
have ignored the manifest fact which the universe 
presents to them — that pain is one of the essential 

[318] 



LOVE 

factors of life. They have based their ideas of life 
on the preconception that pleasure is the end of 
existence, and, viewing the universe in the light of 
this false premise, it has presented itself to them 
as an insoluble riddle ; the dark nightmare of pain 
has forever haunted them. Ignoring it in their 
conceptions of life, it has avenged itself upon them 
(as all neglected truths ever do) by confounding 
their conclusions ; they have attempted to hold, and 
to live by, a theory of life which the indisputable 
logic of facts has been continually pronouncing 
absurd. 

"It once being" clearly recognized that pain is 
not merely an excrescence, but a fundamental 
pecularity of life, the question inevitably arises — 
What end does it subserve? What results does it 
accomplish, or can it accomplish? What heights 
and glories of life does it place within our reach? 

"That it must subserve some end, and that that 
end must be so supremely lofty as not only to 
justify but to glorify the means — these are assump- 
tions which in the one case our intellectual constitu- 
tion and all intellectual experience, in the other our 
spiritual constitution and our spiritual experience, 
demand and justify. For Nature shows us nothing 
but an endless chain of causes and effects — causes 
which are themselves effects, and effects which in the 
very act of becoming such are changed into fresh 
causes ; and consequently we cannot conceive of 
pain — however clearly it may be regarded as an 
effect due to traceable causes — otherwise than as a 
cause whereby new series of results are produced : — 
it must subserve some glorious end. 

[319] 



LOVE 

1 'Glorious,' I say, for a true spiritual faith — our 
spiritual instincts when allowed free and full scope — 
can never do otherwise than hold that all the ends 
for which Nature works are good — right with a 
rightness which is absolute — perfect with all the 
perfectness of the Infinite Spirit, This conviction a 
man with a true spiritual faith will ever hold, how- 
ever tardily the 'evidence of thing's not seen,' which 
faith supplies, may be confirmed by the long-linger- 
ing wisdom of experience. 

"As long as the nature of the Spiritual Fact — i.e. 
of God — remains unrecognized by the soul, the 
mystery of pain must remain a dark one. Indeed, 
the whole creation must remain an insoluable riddle 
to all who have not found that key. 

"But when once the divine truth that God is 
Love is apprehended (apprehended not intellect- 
ually, but spiritually) and the soul begins to know 

" 'How Love might be, hath been indeed, and is,' 

then does this mystery — and, indeed, many mys- 
teries — become illuminated; and if some still elude 
clear apprehension, their glorious perfectness is felt, 
and a sufficiency — nay, more than a sufficiency, an 
overwhelming flood — of the glory which they en- 
shrine, streams in upon the soul. 

"When the truth of love is known it becomes for 
ever impossible to desire or even to conceive of a 
universe free from pain. Love would not be love 
were pain impossible. 

"This may well seem unintelligible, or even 
absurd, to all those (and such the vast majority 
of men are) who base their lives on the axiom that 

[320] 



LOVE 

life is a getting; who make self an end, and the 
welfare of self — in one or other of the various ways 
in which that result can (presumably) be achieved 
— their chief concern. 

"But it will appear neither unintelligible nor ab- 
surd to those who have apprehended the sublime 
truth of Love. For the light with which that truth 
illuminrtes the soul reveals the fact that life is not 
a getting, but a giving — that its joys are not those 
of possession, but of surrendering, not of enjoying, 
but of enduring. 

"The true life of man — the Life of Love which is 
the Life of God — is not centred in self, but in 
others. It finds itself in losing itself. It surrenders 
itself utterly that others may be blessed, dies in 
order to impart its life to them. And thus dying, 
it ever finds its life renewed — renewed with unutter- 
able joys which drown all its sorrows, with a per- 
fection of bliss which swallows up all its pain. 

"This Divine mystery of life must for ever 
elude our comprehension. That is to say, we can 
never hope to understand it fully There must ever 
remain heights and depths of it which thought can 
never reach, and to which the soul must continue to 
aspire ; it is as unfathomable as the Heart of God. 

"But even the feeble apprehension of it which 
we have at present (and which must continue to fall 
short cf what is possible to us as long as that 
supreme manifestation of it which we have in Jesus 
Christ remains unexhausted) enables us to regard 
pain very differently from the way in which it is 
ordinarily regarded by men. If the end which it 
subserves is only partially revealed, it is still 

[321] 



LOVE 

revealed with sufficient clearness to enable us not 
only to reconcile its existence with the goodness of 
the Creator, but to regard it as a most significant 
indication of the fulness of life (and consequently 
the fulness of blessedness, for the two are co-ordi- 
nate) which He has placed within our reach. 

"For were pain impossible, I do not see how it 
could be possible for man to attain to that life of 
Love which is God's Life ; I do not see how that 
Divine energy of giving, which Love is, could be 
created within him. 

"To attain to the life of self-sacrifice it is 
necessary that man should be made capable of a 
self-sacrifice which is real, i. c. painful ; for it is 
impossible to conceive of self-sacrifice which does 
not involve pain and loss. Man must be capable of 
suffering if he is to attain to that life of victorious 
enduring which is true life. 

"The measure of true life is not gain, but loss; 
not man's power of enjoying pleasure, but his 
power of enduring pain. 

"And such a power man undoubtedly possesses; 
though now, alas! for the most part it is misused, 
and he suffers the pain without participating in the 
glorious life which it can produce. 

"But not for ever shall man thus continue 
blindly to suffer, without reaping the harvest of his 
pain. He shall be made alive. At present, while 
he ignorantly strives to get, his suffering seems 
vain, his pain to be utter loss. But it is not so in 
reality. For even thus is the Eternal teaching him 
what true life is; even thus is He inducting him 
into His own eternal blessedness. And when his 

[322] 



LOVE 

eyes are opened, and he learns not grudgingly to 
suffer, but willingly to conform to and co-operate 
with the perfect Law of Life — to suffer and be 
strong — then shall the perfect bliss of living take 
possession of his soul, and he shall remember no 
more the anguish for joy that he has become alive — 
alive with the life of God." 

"God forbid that I should make light of the 
world's pain, in which the whole creation groaneth 
and travaileth ! To human eyes — which in con- 
templating it must ever be half-blinded by tears — 
its light must often appear darkness, its glory 
gloom. 

"To contemplate it serenely, in the light of the 
glorious end which is being accomplished by it, is 
not vouchsafed to man, who is not yet alive with 
the life which it begets, but is still only being made 
alive. How can he help writhing under the 
ang'uish, seeing that it is real and present, and as yet 
has not been consummated by the glorious birth? 
Let it not be supposed that it is possible, or ever will 
be possible, to annihilate the reality of that anguish 
by any forestalling of the joys which it, and it alone, 
can usher in. The anguish is real, and the reality 
of the present pain must often hide from the soul 
which endures it the prospect, and even the hope 
of the resultant joy. The primary condition of 
complete self-renunciation is that he who thus re- 
nounces does not see that it is good ; how else could 
he lose himself utterly? Therefore must the cry 
continue to go up to Heaven from the lips of the 
suffering children of earth, 'Father, if it be possible, 

[323] 



LOVE 

let this cup pass' — going, however, to the ears of 
One who is too wise and good to grant the request ; 
and men, like the lonely Christ, must tread the dark 
and unknown way which seems to lead to utter loss, 
before they can attain to the glorious resurrection 
which ushers them into the life which is eternal. 

"Nevertheless, it cannot but be good to know 
that the dark cloud of pain has a silver lining, even 
though in some hours it is impossible to see it, or 
even to believe that it is there. 

"Therefore let it be loudly proclaimed, in tones 
of clearest assurance throughout the length and 
breadth of this suffering earth, that all pain must 
end in good ; let every sufferer know that it is life- 
giving, and brings a double blessing — to him who 
bravely endures it, and to the world for which it is 
endured." 

"It is not pain alone which becomes subservient 
to a beneficent purpose for those who have been 
quickened into true life by the touch of love. For 
this life has the power of assimilating all experi- 
ences — of gaining strength and nourishment from 
them, and of making them conducive to its growth. 
To it belongs the unique power of transmuting all 
opposition into helps, of absorbing and turning into 
the line of its own progress all forces, however ap- 
parently antagonistic. There is no experience 
which the soul of man can undergo, either in rela- 
tion to its more immediate environment of mind 
and sense, or in relation to the world and the world's 
life (in which it perforce must have a share), which 
it cannot make conducive to development along the 

[3 2 4] 



LOVE 

lines of love. To the soul that loves, all things tend 
to life. Love is the clue which will guide it through 
all the tortuous labyrinths of experience into the 
ever-widening halls of the Infinite. 

"When a soul has linked itself to the Eternal Soul 
by the bonds of a living faith, and has become con- 
scious of the love which ceaselessly outflows to it 
from this undying Source, the triumphant utiliza- 
tion of all experience for ends of life becomes a 
necessary corollary to this, its fundamental experi- 
ence. 

"All things must work together for good when 
that which is central in the life of men vibrates in 
harmony with that which is central in the Life of the 
Universe. When that fundamental adjustment has 
been accomplished, there is nothing for which they 
can work together except the expansion and the 
perfecting of that correspondence. Let what will 
come, of those experiences which the majority of 
men (who have not yet had their souls illuminated 
by the light of love) deem 'evil' — pain, sorrow, 
bereavement, loss — to the soul that trusts and loves 
they cannot be evil ; they cannot but be good ; 
they cannot fail to foster and strengthen that 
Spirit of Life which hopeth all things, beareth all 
things, believeth all things, endureth all things ; 
they cannot but conduce to the ripening and per- 
fecting of those fruits of the Spirit which the tree of 
life bears so plentifully when once it has tapped 
with its roots the well-spring of the Eternal 
Love. 

"That it is possible thus to transmute all human 
experience into gain; that there is one end which 

[325] 



LOVE 

man can aim at which enables him to turn every- 
thing to use; that life may be able to produce this 
net result, higher Life ; — is a fact which cannot be 
denied : there have been so many undoubted cases 
in which this result has been produced. 

"And in this fact is to be found the only 
adequate solution of the mystery of human life. If 
there is any key at all to unlock the door of the 
mystery — if there is any royal road which it is pos- 
sible for man to tread — it is there. When we have 
discovered that it is possible for every soul to trans- 
mute all the fleeting experiences of its present life 
into results which abide — when the truth is known 
that all the conditions of existence are framed to 
produce these results, and no others — that the full 
tide of the Universe sets steadily to spiritual ends — 
ends so perfectly and incomparably glorious that all 
the pain and woe which has to be endured while they 
are being accomplished cannot be reckoned even as 
dust in the balance against the perfect wisdom and 
beneficence of Him who ordered and who guides 
(for who that has tasted of the sweetness of the 
Life of Love can compare the pain of the travail by 
which it has been won with the fulness of its abid- 
ing bliss?) : — when, I say, this is discovered and 
known, we can no longer speak of life as an insol- 
uble riddle, we can no longer regard the world as 
bewildering and chaotic. Light streams in here 
which illuminates and glorifies every individual life, 
and which makes the entire history of the world 
Divine. 

"With the spirit of all-conquering and all- 
enduring Love in our hearts, and the knowledge 

[326] 



LOVE 

that this is also the Spirit of the Universe, where 
is there any room for doubt or fear? Much that is 
strange remains — much that we know but in part, 
or do not understand at all. But nothing too hard 
for the soul which loves to accept in faith ; nothing 
too painful for it to endure. Strange, life may still 
be, and painful; there may be — there must be — 
much which requires the exercise of faith, much 
which tries and tests it. But all the experiences 
which life brings will place that soul in the posses- 
sion of larger life — will continually open up before 
it sublimer revelations of the perfection and the 
surpassing sweetness of that Infinite Love in whom 
we live, and move, and have our being." 

"The spiritual life — the life of Love — springing, 
as it does, from a personal relationship between 
the individual soul and the Eternal, of necessity 
embraces the whole range of the soul's activity — 
its outward and visible relations with the Great-All, 
as well as its inward and spiritual communion. 

"This spiritual life is rooted in the Invisible. It 
lays hold of the unseen Heart of things with the 
tendrils of faith, and is rich in that spiritual com- 
munion which results therefrom. But it is no mere 
thing of the emotions — no mere private experience, 
peculiar to the inner life. The energy which it de- 
rives from this spiritual communion cannot expend 
itself within. It craves to express itself. It seeks 
to embody itself in some form. It shares in common 
with the whole of Nature — in common with its 
source — in that Divine impulse to objectify itself 
which is the distinguishing characteristic of Life. 

[3 2 7] 



LOVE 

"To meet this fundamental need of the soul it 
has been furnished with faculties, physical and men- 
tal. These condition it ; they form the appointed 
channels through which, and through which alone, 
its energy can find expression. 

"And unless it were thus confined, how were life 
possible to it? Force unresisted, unconfined, lies 
latent and powerless ; only when working against 
resistance does it manifest itself. 

"Therefore has that spiritual energy which the 
soul is been conditioned, placed in a house of flesh, 
and furnished with the organ of mind whereby it 
apprehends the Great Spirit mediately, as phenom- 
ena, and under the peculiar conditions produced by 
the subjective impressions of time and space, and 
has relations with other similarly conditioned 
spirits. It has thus been provided with the means 
whereby its energy may express itself — tools where- 
with it can rear a noble temple — room to blossom 
and bear fruit after its kind. 

"This, and this only, is the proper function of 
the bodily and intellectual powers of man ; they are 
the means which the Eternal Love has provided 
whereby the soul may give expression to that 
energy of Love which is its true life." 

"What kind of active life in the world the 
spiritual energy of Love, when it has once been 
aroused in 

" 'The abysmal deeps of Personality' 

must ever produce, is evident from what we know 
concerning the nature of Love. 

[328] 



LOVE 

"The spirit of Love is diametrically opposed to 
the spirit of the world. The principles which it 
assumes as the axioms of life are the exact reverse 
of those assumed by men in whom this Divine en- 
ergy has not been stirred. 

"The great majority of men, who have not yet 
awakened to the life of Love, rear their lives on 
the basis of self. They start from the assumption 
that self-interest is the primary law of life. The 
gratification of their own desires, the accomplish- 
ment of their own aims and wishes, is the end which 
they pursue, — either wholly regardless of the rights 
and needs of others, or only paying such attention 
to them as a prudent regard for their own interests 
dictates. To get is the motto of their lives. 

"Love's motto, on the other hand, is to give. 
Self-renunciation is the axiom from which she 
works. Her life is pivoted on the needs of others; 
her delight is to give herself up in order to meet 
these — to die that others may be blessed. No limit 
does she set to her self-sacrifice : she gives her all ; 
her life is as boundless as her own power to give, 
and humanity's power and need to receive. 

"It is evident that since there is this radical dif- 
ference in the principles on which these two kinds 
of life are based, there must be an equally radical 
difference in the results which follow from them. 
The entire fabric of life must differ in the two cases 
as widely as the Gothic architecture differs from the 
Egyptian, and if by chance there are any apparent- 
similarities, they can only be apparent — in their 
intent and meaning they must be entirely dissimilar. 

"From the very first moment when the life of 

[3 2 9] 



LOVE 

Love is stirred within, the whole current of the life 
must be changed, and flow in a different channel. 
Not a single act or relationship can remain un- 
affected by the revolution which this change pro- 
duces in all that a man strives after and desires — 
hates and loves. 

"It is evident, however, that innumerable de- 
grees of clearness of apprehension and of fulness of 
attainment are possible in the life of Love, and con- 
sequently innumerable degrees in the perfectness 
with which it is embodied in deeds. 

"The man who has been awakened to the life 
of Love has entered the gate of true life, but all its 
infinite fulness remains yet to be explored. The 
height to which any man attains in that life depends 
upon his insight into the nature of Love : in propor- 
tion to that insight will be the beauty of his life as 
manifested in the world, and its divergence from, 
and contrast to, the life of those who are not yet 
alive. 

"Whether there is any end to the fulness of the 
Life of Love — whether we shall ever cease 'follow- 
ing on to know' — ever attain to full apprehension 
of this mighty Reality of Love which has created 
us and continually sustains us ; whether at last we 
shall rest from endeavour, because we shall have 
attained to perfection of Light, and Life, and Love, 
who shall say? 

"For the present it suffices the loftiest ambition 
and the most exalted dreams of good to contem- 
plate, and to aspire to know in its fulness that reve- 
lation of unfathomable Love which we have in the 
Man Christ Jesus." 

[33o] 



LOVE 

"Do I make light of the mystery in which this 
life of ours is enshrined? Do I too boldly and con- 
fidently talk of Truth, as if I had held her hand and 
gazed upon her open face ? — I, who am but as other 
men, looking with human eyes on the earth and the 
stars and the bewildering complexity of human life, 
pondering with weak human faculties the problem 
of the Infinite which surrounds me? 

"Do I forget the magnitude of that problem, and 
the magnitude of the issues involved in its solution 
— the stern facts of human life, and the binding 
necessity that at any cost the Truth, however 
unwelcome, should be known? 

"Do I forget the awfulness of the tragedy which 
is being enacted daily around me — the passion and 
the pathos, the sorrow and the pain, the crime and 
the sin, of this strugling humanity? 

"Do I forget the wrecked and disappointed 
lives, or the blighted hopes, the unsatisfied desires, 
the weariness and listlessness, and dark despair 
which fill so many human hearts ? 

"I trust not. I trust it has been no neglect on 
my part to face manfully all the facts of this won- 
derful and mysterious life of ours which has enabled 
me to arrive at conclusions so hopeful and cheering 
concerning it and the Author of it. 

"If they are untrue, and it is but a dream I have 
dreamed; if I have reared my thought and shaped 
my life upon prepossessions, instead of upon solid 
facts, and thus have come to regard humanity with 
brighter hope than is warrantable, and have been 
led to call that which is the Cause of us and the 
cosmos by a better Name than it deserves; — then 

[33i] 



LOVE 

let all I have conceived and imagined perish, and in 
despairing silence let me wait till the dream dis- 
solves, and I awake to the dread reality. 

"But, as the years go on, the dream — if it be a 
dream — does not dissolve, but continually presses 
upon me with the appearance of greater reality. 
Can it be a dream and delusion which thus so per- 
sistently clings to me; which continually reveals 
brighter and more glorious vistas of joyous life; 
which perpetually floods me with the sweetness of a 
satisfying peace? I think not. But if it be, it is 
now too deep to be broken by anything that life 
can bring. Till death either confirms or shatters 
it, I must hold to what I have held to as the Truth 
so long; — that God is Love, and that a boundless 
life of perfect love is possible to man — is indeed the 
goal of humanity. 

"Nay, I will not leave the matter thus. I will 
not write as if any lingering doubt haunted me that 
the vision I behold is unreal — that the truth I grasp 
is delusion. I do not dream; I am awake. I am 
alive in a living world, and in very deed this is the 
glorious truth — God is Love. All that is deepest in 
me craves for it ; all that is noblest in me aspires to 
it ; all that is truest in me affirms it. 

"And it is confirmed by that unfathomable self- 
renunciation which was consummated on Calvary. 
This is the Truth, even as Truth is in Jesus. Living 
in that, I find continually greater satisfaction for all 
my wants; I find peace, joy, and ever-expanding 
Life. 

"In the light of that measureless Love I can view 
the confusion and the sin of earth without dismay. 

[332] 



LOVE 

Listening to Life's music with that master motive 
to guide me, I find the discords continually resolv- 
ing themselves into harmony, and I know that those 
which remain are only parts of an oratorio too glo- 
riously perfect to be compressed to the compass of 
my human ear. Regarded in that light, Nature is 
Divine ; she is the mirror of the Eternal, and all her 
voices echo 'Love.' 

"I live in the consciousness that underneath 
me are the everlasting arms of a Love as boundless 
as the love of Christ. The world is my Father's 
house. I read love in the sunlight and in the 
shadow, in the darkness and in the light, whether 
of Nature or of human life. I read the world in 
the light of the Son of Love, and it is illuminated 
therewith, and glows with the brightness of an 
ineffable glory. 

"I see no limit to life short of the limitless 
Life of the Eternal; and I measure that Life by the 
measure of the stature of the fulness of the Man 
Christ Jesus. 

"This is the truth, O, brother man! this indeed 
is the Truth : Thou art held in the hollow of the 
hand of the Eternal ; thou art clasped to His bosom. 
And He is the Eternal Lover." 

I cannot do better than pause here in what has 
been to me an arduous but pleasing labour during 
the last few months. 

I have lying before me a huge pile of my friend's 
MSS., containing a large number of reflections on 
a variety of subjects, which I have not seen my way 
to incorporate in this volume. 

[333] 



LOVE 

Should this selection meet with a friendly 
reception, I may, at some future time, undertake 
the task of -arranging and editing these. 

Meanwhile I send this forth, in the hope that it 
may be helpful to some, and that from it may be 
gathered a not wholly inadequate impression of the 
thoughts and convictions of 

"That friend of mine who lives in God." 



[334] 



SEP 14 1904 



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